The spectators are gathered like a jury of the Assize Court.
The facts? Five years earlier, outside a nightclub, Gaspard Valeur kidnaps with the help of some friends a former classmate of 17 years, Louise Leduc, under the influence of drugs, and rapes her.
The trial is taking place. The President of the Court, the Advocate General, the expert psychiatrist, Louise's mother and lawyers intervened in turn.
Louise tells us about her ordeal. Still paralyzed by fear, she searches for her words but we quickly understand that there is not really one to describe the atrocity of what she has experienced. His memories are blurred and fragmented, but some are very real, there is no reason to doubt it.
In a way, his attackers stole his integrity and memories. "I died, but I continued to live. They stole my teenage years and projected me into adulthood," she says.
She explains to us that today she conceives an immeasurable hatred for all men. She can only see herself ugly and dirty in a mirror, with the feeling of being a whore! She has anxiety attacks, screams at night…
Louise awaits the rapist's conviction so that she can love herself. Stop surviving and learn to live again, finally!
Gaspard Valeur, son of a good family, is pretentious, odious, indifferent to the tragedy of the girl. He did not fail to boast on social networks of having "fucked Louise", an easy and consenting girl! This triggered attacks against her on the Net in the form of insanities, further accentuating her ordeal.
Gaspard, a spoiled child, has actually behaved like an animal ignoring this evidence: love does not take force, it gives itself!
We are witnessing the unfolding of a trial whose outcome seems uncertain. It is Word against Word, as is sometimes said! The play plunges us into the mysteries of the trial at the assizes of the rapist, but a trial where the victim feels little by little becoming the accused.
To the question of whether she had any distinctive signs of refusal, Louise answers in the negative, being drugged, paralyzed with fear, in immense pain.
She had been drinking, she wore a skirt, she has no video evidence, no witnesses, she uses drugs occasionally, she became an actress, she comes from a problem family… All these elements make that she is not eligible for rape indicates the attorney general!
And yet, each of the virtual jurors that we are feels it, knows it well in his heart: Louise was raped!
As if addicted to pain, psychological and physical , she leads us to the limits of what is acceptable, and pushes us to question violence against women, which we do not always see or underestimate. And we suffer with it!
Unfortunately, we understand that the trial tilts in favor of the rapist, that it is his word that is taken into account. We hope for a turnaround, we want to believe that justice will be done. We think of the thousands of women who have been beaten, raped and killed.
You hold your breath, until the last minute! What verdict: guilty, not guilty?
The actors are all excellent, remarkable for accuracy and truth in this show which is a real cry of distress against violence against women when we know that barely 2% of rapes end in a trial.
A must-see show! !
Fabrice GLOCKNER
With Clémence Baron, Colin Doucet, Brieuc Dumont, Alexis Hubert, Caroline Saule, Mathilde Toubeau
Text and direction by Clémence Baron
Press Secretary Dominique Lhotte
Stage manager Jean-Louis Baron
At Sham's Théâtre in Avignon on July 7, 9, 11, 14, 16, 18, 21, 23, 25, 28, 30
Alternating with Fallacia, an excellent vaudeville played by the same company, La Baronnerie
