2023-09-12 10:07:03
On the small stage of the Théâtre de Belleville in Paris, Marie Frémont, who directs The iceadopts a falsely apologetic pout: she prefers to warn the audience from the outset that they should not have many opportunities to smile during the performance.
Six actresses present the life of Amélie, an apparently happy young woman who spends her life searching for the causes of a deep malaise, which she hides from those around her. A dark episode from her past torments her daily life: she was raped by a stranger in her stairwell, when she was only 9 years old. One day, a call from the juvenile brigade tells him that a suspect has been arrested. Then begins a liberating path for Amélie, who will finally regain possession of her existence.
In real life, Amélie’s name is Adélaïde Bon and this story is hers. The play is adapted from his autobiographical novel The Little Girl on the ice floereleased in 2018. A double challenge for Marie Frémont: successfully adapting the book and staging a subject with a very high emotional charge.
Excerpts from interviews and essays on child abuse
A challenge met with flying colors, as the unspeakable is captured with sensitivity, without pathos. Céline Laugier accurately interprets Amélie, child and adult, oscillating between the joy of being alive and a deep despair that encircles her, like the filaments of a jellyfish. Behind her long white and blue dress, we also notice her shadow, her traumatized alter ego played magnificently by Joséphine Thoby. Their reunion symbolizes the beginning of Amélie’s healing.
Bringing a documentary dimension, the director chose to add to the text extracts from conferences and interviews with psychiatrist Muriel Salmona, from the essay Fatal Beauty by Mona Chollet and various interviews with psychiatrist Boris Cyrulnik. So many reflections which nourish and distance the emotion of the testimony. At least 160,000 minors are victims of child abuse each year in France, the piece recalls.
Comic breathing
And, despite the seriousness of the subject, laughter often contradicts Marie Frémont’s initial warning. When Damien Bennetot makes all kinds of acerbic remarks about his work, for example: the play is too damning, too political or not enough, does not spare the spectators enough… The ironic responses of the director, who plays her own role, then offer welcome comic relief.
This choral piece – the different voices blending fluidly without ever leading the viewer astray – accomplishes the small feat of combining the strength of intimate experience and the most recent expertise on the subject of sexual violence. To grasp the terrible universal.
#theater #echo #chamber #child #criminal #violence