La Douleur Tickets

Directed by Patrice Chéreau and Thierry Thieû Niang and starring Dominique Blanc. 80 min. In French with English supertitles.

Based on Marguerite Duras’ 1985 text The War: A Memoir, this performance recounts the anguish of a woman awaiting her husband’s return from the Dachau concentration camp. In 1945, as the globe celebrated an end to World War II, Duras (1914-1996) was despondent; her husband remained missing, and she had no idea if he was dead or alive.

French actress Dominique Blanc reprises her 2010 Molière Best Actress Award-winning role in this wrenching performance. Re-staged by Patrice Chéreau with choreography by Thierry Thieû Niang (Une jeune fille de 90 ans), La Douleur is resonant with Duras’ physical and psychological turmoil throughout WWII. The adaptation echoes the simplicity and intensity of Duras’ writing.

Critically-acclaimed French film and theater actress Dominique Blanc is a Knight of the Order of the Legion of Honour and has won four César Awards, the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup for Best Actress, and three Molière Awards for Best Actress. Her lauded stage roles have spanned Une maison de poupée (1997) to Les liaisons dangereuses (2016), and some of her best known films include Milou en mai (1990), Ceux qui m’aiment prendront le train (1998), and L’Autre (2008).

Patrice Chéreau (1944-2013) was a French opera and theater director, filmmaker, actor, and producer. He’s best known for his films La Reine Margot (1994) and for his 1976 staging of Richard Wagner’s Jahrhundertring. He gave master classes in film at Columbia University, the City College of New York, and the School of Visual Arts, and was president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Dancer and choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang is an Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, a laureate of the Villa Médicis hors les murs in Vietnam, a member of the Unesco-Aschberg Foundation in Kenya, and was awarded the SACD Prize for choreography in 2019.