Adaptation and direction by Françoise Courvoisier.
With Martine Schambacher and Françoise Courvoisier. Assistant director: Léa Déchamboux. Set design: Natacha Jaquerod.
Lighting: Rinaldo Del Boca. Sound: Nicolas Le Roy. © Anouk Schneider
At 46 Rue de Berne, in the kitchen of Grisélidis Réal, the legendary Geneva-based painter, writer, and sex worker, we witness two periods of her life unfolding simultaneously. On one side, the actress Martine Schambacher embodies the grande dame as she faces cancer in the final years of her life; on the other, Françoise Courvoisier portrays her ten years earlier, when she is still fully active.
This theatrical adaptation draws on the countless letters she wrote to her friend Jean-Luc Hennig, published in two volumes by Éditions Verticales: La Passe Imaginaire and Les Sphinx.
Whatever the importance of Grisélidis’s revolutionary struggle, her greatest strength—and, I believe, her greatest dignity—lies in having turned her life, her body as a sex worker, and her dreams into writing. A style that is at once lyrical and furious, splendid and unrestrained.
— Jean-Luc Hennig, excerpt from the preface to Les Sphinx