LACRIMA

Paris, 2025. A renowned French haute couture workshop receives an important commission from the British royal family: they are to make the wedding dress for the British princess’ wedding. Bound to the strictest confidentiality and without knowing what the final product will look like, various people all over the globe start to work on this valuable and excitedly anticipated object. Over the course of eight months, a British fashion designer, the fashion design sketcher and her colleagues in the workshop in Paris, three over 70-year-old lacemakers in Alençon in Normandy – the last of their guild – and a beadworker in Mumbai work on different ends of this secret project. Based on the long, arduous and tragic manufacturing process of a royal wedding dress – a symbol of the glory and excess of old Europe, which will ultimately spend a few minutes at the centre of the marriage ceremony – in her last major production, which premiered in 2024, Caroline Guiela Nguyen tells a story about the structural and private violence hidden inside this overwhelming beauty and luxury. While, in the real world, everyone involved is bound to secrecy, on this stage their fates and efforts, their dreams and tears are given a voice.

ARTISTIC COLLABORATION: Paola Secret
SET DESIGN: Alice Duchange
COSTUMES: Benjamin Moreau
VIDEO: Jérémie Scheidler
SOUNDDESIGN: Antoine Richard
MUSIC: Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Teddy Gauliat-Pitois, Antoine Richard
DRAMATURGY: Louison Ryser, Tristan Schinz and the dramaturgy class of the school des Théâtre national du Strasbourg
LIGHT DESIGN: Mathilde Chamoux, Jérémie Papin

WITH: Dan Artus, Dinah Bellity, Natasha Cashman, Charles Vinoth Irudhayaraj, Anaele Jan Kerguistel, Maud Le Grevellec, Liliane Lipau, Nanii, Rajarajeswari Parisot, Vasanth Selvam und im Video/and in video: Nadia Bourgeois, Charles Schera, Fleur Sulmont, with the voices of: Louise Marcia Blévins, Béatrice Dedieu, David Geselson, Jessica Savage-Hanford, Maya S. Krishnan