In December 2024, Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old man suffering from chronic back pain, shot and killed Brian Thompson, CEO of one of the largest American health insurance companies, using a weapon he had manufactured with a 3D printer.

While Mangione’s legal fate remains unresolved, the collective Dreams Come True transforms this news event into a unique theatre play oscillating between fiction and documentary. What if Paulette Thompson, the victim’s widow, were to turn toward restorative justice and seek dialogue with the man who murdered her husband? Two actors embody fictional avatars of the protagonists and engage in a restorative justice process, a practice complementary to criminal justice, aiming to facilitate dialogue between victims and perpetrators under the guidance of trained facilitators.

This process, fictional yet developed as closely as possible to real restorative justice protocols, is observed at every stage by Adèle Yon—author of Mon vrai nom est Elisabeth, a work blending essay, investigation and autobiographical narrative—who transforms it into the material for a theatre piece directed by Yan Duyvendak.

By engaging with this emblematic case, rapidly amplified across social media, where Luigi Mangione was turned into a symbolic hero of resistance against predatory ultra-capitalism, Dear Luigi, I Hate You explores through fiction the possibility of dialogue capable of transcending the fractures and violent antagonisms shaping contemporary society.