Lorraine de Sagazan & Anouk Maugein – Monte di Pietà, 2023

After directing plays from the repertoire, Lorraine de Sagazan has developed a body of work since 2020 that is not based on theatrical texts but rather on encounters with strangers. The narratives and personal histories she collects have led her to examine the ways in which fiction can respond to reality. Her latest play, Leviathan, focuses on relatively unknown marginal alternatives to contemporary justice, based on empathy and reparative approache. Since 2018, she has been working with Anouk Maugein, designing the sets for her shows Un Sacre, Le silence and Léviathan. Anouk Maugein creates scenic spaces and visual installations that she sees as living architectures with a strong symbolic and dramaturgical charge. At the intersection of performance, theatre and the visual arts, Lorraine de Sagazan and Anouk Maugein’s many faceted work aims to create utopian, imaginary counter-spaces in response to societal and institutional concerns.

The installation Monte di Pietà (“Pawnshop’’) is based on hundreds of personal accounts The artwork seeks to reveal the suffering that can result from injustice. Labelled and listed, the objects in the installation are linked to their owners’ traumatic memories of wrongs they have been victim of. Monte di Pietà acts as a shrine to suffering, where no story is allowed to be forgotten. The installation is an open-ended work, in which the stories behind the objects are put into words by the poet Laura Vazquez and performed by actors from La Brèche. Lorraine de Sagazan also organises sessions in which members of the public can drop off a personal item that symbolises an injustice done to them.