Simone de Beauvoir

Quand deux voix se conjuguent: Hearing Simone de Beauvoir through the eyes and sensibilities of actress Marie-Armelle Deguy.

For Marie-Armelle Deguy and many of us, Simone de Beauvoir represents a unique reading experience. That's why, in this production at Les Franciscaines, she has composed and brought together several extracts from Simone de Beauvoir's texts, set to music by percussionist and composer Jean-Christophe Feldhandler. We hear excerpts from La Force de l'âge, interviews and Mémoires d'une jeune fille rangée, an account of Simone de Beauvoir's early twenties, in which she describes her bourgeois, penniless upbringing, then her turn away from the straightforward life her family offered her, thanks to literature and philosophy. The actress preserves the author's intentions, allowing us to hear the voice that emerged from childhood, that of the woman who, through her writing, wished to speak to her readers, and that of the writer who, many years later, comments on and analyzes her autobiographical project and the not-so-"tidy" career of a brilliant young girl who would become one of the founding figures of feminism.