Artist in Focus:
Caroline Guiela Nguyen
This edition of our festival will once more be giving centre stage to the work of an artistic personality as our Artist in Focus: this year, you will be able to attend two productions and one preview of the most recent work by Franco-Vietnamese author and director Caroline Guiela Nguyen. She was born in the South of France in 1981 to a Franco-Vietnamese mother and a Jewish-Sephardic father. Guiela Nguyen describes the fact that she herself never learnt her mother’s language as a crucial starting point for her writing. »When my mother arrived in France, the first thing that was required of her was that she cast aside her language and speak French. This was thus not her own personal decision – her silence was politically desired. To this day, our stories are not told anywhere, not at school, not in public, and so suddenly this feeling of shame emerges. In my productions, I want to break the silence and make visible the stories of those who have spent too long being invisible.« Guiela Nguyen initially studied sociology and then theatre direction at the École du Théâtre national de Strasbourg. During her studies, she started working with the artistic team that to this day still works with her on every one of her company’s new productions: the set designer Alice Duchange, the costume designer Benjamin Moreau, the composer Antoine Richard, the video artist Jérémie Scheidler, the lighting designer Jérémie Papin and the artistic col- laborator Paola Secret. Since 2009, they are all connected through their company, »Les Hommes Approximatifs« (»Approximate People«). Their work embodies a particular form of theatrical realism, which believes just as strongly in the necessity of making the real world, in all of its contra- dictions, into an object for the theatre, as in the freedom of telling invented stories. Her productions, in which the ensemble is often made up of both professional and non-professional actors, tell fictional stories in hyper-realistic settings, which are strongly inspired by research, travel, interviews, and real places, events and people. Her first major works were created at the Comédie de Valence: »Se souvenir de Violetta«, »Ses Mains«, »Le Bal d’Emma«, »Elle brûle« and »Le Chagrin«.
From 2015, Guiela Nguyen entered into an artistic collab- oration with inmates of the prison in Arles – this work led, over the course of several years, to the stage productions »Désordre d’un futur passé« and »Marius«, as well as to her film »Les Engloutis« (»The Lost«).
Caroline Guiela Nguyen and »Les Hommes Approximatifs« had their international breakthrough with her production entitled »SAIGON«, a sweeping panorama of the rifts left behind in the French colonial history of Vietnam in relationships, be they within families or with lovers or friends. This produc- tion was presented as part of FIND 2018, and introduced Guiela Nguyen to German audiences. Since then, the production has travelled all around the world, and is now returning to FIND 2025 as part of a showcase of Guiela Ngyuen’s work.
During this year’s FIND, we will be presenting Guiela Nguyen’s play »LACRIMA«, in which various people located all around the globe work on a wedding dress for the British royal family. The tales behind the dress tell a story of private and structural violence – and of tears. In an exclusive preview, we will also be showing Guiela Nguyen’s most recent work, the world premiere of which is not until the end of April in Strasbourg – at the Théâtre National, of which she has been the artistic director since 2023: »Valentina«. The play tells the story of a child who must translate fateful diagnoses from a doctor for her mother, who does not speak French – and is thus faced with the question of whether to confront her mother with the truth.