Lifting the Skin of Reality
FIND25’s »Artist in Focus«, Caroline Guiela Nguyen

I ask French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen about her work with the Théâtre national de Strasbourg, suggesting that the centre isn’t always the centre. Perhaps there are advantages to working on the edge, at a safe distance from Paris’s gravitational pull?

Guiela Nguyen is too elegant to evaluate the capital, and remarks instead on the advantages of being on Alsace’s linguistic and cultural fault line, a place that is also very European. But she does reply that »Universalism today needs to be totally rethought. That’s why I love this phrase, that the centre is not always the centre«.

Decentering is a way of understanding nearly a decade of Nguyen’s work, since she first premiered »SAIGON« at Schaubühne’s FIND 2018. She now returns for this year’s festival as our »Artist in Focus«, with a reprise of that début piece, and two other productions, »LACRIMA« [2024] and »Valentina« [2025], a new work appearing in Berlin as an avant-premiere.

I ask what it’s like to rehearse old and new pieces together at the festival, and she replies, »What is particularly satisfying is not just to revisit three pieces, but to see all the collaborators of these works coinciding in the same place. We unite people who come from very different backgrounds––French, Vietnamese, Indian, English, and Romanian-French actors, with our different languages––and out of these differences we manage to tell stories. I find this very touching«.

»If you reflect on your work as a whole, what are the continuities? What is the road from »SAIGON« to today?«

»›SAIGON‹ was very important for me, the first time that I actually reconciled the question of narrative with geography and history in my work. I was enabled to imagine stories on a much bigger scale, and I’ve continued with this«.

Guiela Nguyen insists on narratives from the perspective of the »other«, putting French life in the perspective of global history. »SAIGON« is told from a Vietnamese restaurant in Paris, »LACRIMA« provides an international perspective on the textile industry, and »Valentina« is about a child who translates in a medical setting for an immigrant parent who does not speak French.

To give voice to these subaltern stories, Nguyen has throughout her career relied on what she calls »experts of reality«, which is a better way of describing actors who do not normally work professionally in theatre. They are anchored by the love of the story, »this need for storytelling. It’s fundamental. I even have the impression that I’m doing well in my life only when I manage to take something from reality and transform it into a narrative. This is what keeps me tied to reality«.

Workplaces––a kitchen, a garment atelier––are these real places, and there is a focus on work done by hand. With it comes the consideration of who does that work, and what colonial contexts persist.

Guiela Nguyen elaborates, »»SAIGON« takes place in a restaurant, and is about this profession of being a restaurateur, and the impact it has on everyone’s life, especially when you’re an exile. A Vietnamese restaurant becomes the place where you can hear your language spoken, where you can eat and sense smells that are also linked to your previous life. In »LACRIMA« we’re still in workshops: a lace workshop, an embroidery workshop, and a Parisian dressmaking atelier. In »Valentina«, it’s again in places of work because the mother and the little girl go to school with a teacher, and visit a cardiologist«.

»Ultimately, work is something that we all have in common. And I find it hard to imagine these stories occurring in more intimate spaces. These spaces are the ones that structure society. Because they are public, they give the productions a political grounding. They are ours, they are about us, and they are places for which we all bear responsibility«.

I reply that although all these spaces and subjects have a realistic basis, her sets and scenarios are often full of fantasy. Has this tension been productive for her as a director?

Guiela Nguyen explains that, in the writing or scenography, this extra imaginative dimension can »lift the skin of reality«, but she discourages me from thinking that »we have reality on one side, and fiction on the other«. Rather, she says, »Through fiction, I’ve managed to understand and capture things about my reality that reality itself was not able to teach me. In other words, in the end, fiction teaches us about reality and reality about fiction. In fact, they are two brothers or two sisters who never let go of each other«.

I continue, »You’ve told us about space. But could you also tell us about your interest in structures of language and language politics? This is another red thread through your work«.

She nods, »As an author, I realise that I love capturing the language of the trades. For example, in »Valentina« I work with cardiologists, and the language of cardiologists, or in »LACRIMA« it’s the language of someone who makes lace. For me, language is the place where you live. When Hannah Arendt was asked: what is your homeland? She replied that my homeland is my language. It accommodates our social relationships. The question of language at work is also an author’s job. It forces me to listen more closely. I’m incapable, for example, of inventing the language of a cardiologist if I don’t spend a lot of time listening to him. But then I reinvent and sculpt it«.

»I imagine a lot of interviews try to put you in boxes«, I suggest, »What are the most common questions and ways of pigeonholing your work? Am I guilty? And how do we get out of this classification?«

»No, you're not guilty!« she laughs, »Often, my work is described with an immediate comparison to a male director. What always surprises me is people’s need to compare women to a man. For example, they liken my work to Wajdi [Mouawad]. I really like Wajdi's work, that’s not a problem. His love of fiction was indeed important to me. But why this constant need for comparison?«

She continues, »But the classification that I find most offensive is that of being a »humanist« director. As if putting diversity on a stage is a human gesture, and I have a big heart and am very generous in doing so. It’s not true. I find it very patronising, and colonial, in relation to the people I work with«.

»Is this a blindness to the political impulse in your work?« I ask.

»In France, my work is recognised as political. But it is often also described as melodrama. Just because there are tears, or emotion, or violins, it doesn’t mean I write melodramas. This diminishes the violence my characters experience. No, I write tragedies. Leaving Vietnam overnight is a tragedy. Arriving at the doctor’s and not being able to make yourself understood and having to ask your nine-year-old daughter to translate, that’s a tragedy. But after a while people will understand that what is common to all these projects is the dignity of people. All the characters are powerful. Yes, they are victims, but they are worthy and strong«.

Interview in French, translations to English by Joseph Pearson

LACRIMA