A true story, performed
“The incomparable tale of an ordinary resurrection”
Without a safety net, the brash actress turns toward us: Is there a volunteer in the audience? Who will step out of their reassuringly anonymous seat to help reconstruct the true story of the courageous survivor of a stroke? An hour and a quarter of pure theatrical vertigo, both in form and narrative.
With fearsome accuracy, the breathtaking Anne-Marie Olivier steps into the shoes of Maurice Dancause, an economist and civil servant who, at thirty-three years old, suffered a stroke and spent nine days in a coma, waking up a total stranger to himself. Everything he had taken for granted, from speaking to eating and holding a spoon, had to be relearned. The set design accurately recreates the interviews that Anne-Marie held with this miraculously self-cured man. And every night, the show transforms and takes on new life with a conversation partner chosen at random from the crowd.
It's a deeply moving tale of resilience, discovering how Maurice Dancause chose to stay on the side of light and turn this intimate tragedy into a chance to grow and become a better person. His stop-and start, hesitant speech becomes poetry, and his fight our own.