LA DOULEUR DE MARGUERITE DURAS

In it, she describes the interminable wait for the return of Robert L., who had been deported to Dachau. *La Douleur* is a testimony: a testimony to the war, seen from the ‘home front’ as they say, and that of a woman waiting for her husband, not knowing whether he is dead or alive. It is ‘the wait shared by all women’, as Duras would say.

Following an initial production of this play, it seemed to us both urgent and necessary to present this text once more, in a shorter version, alternating between reading and performance. To continue bearing witness, at a time when the very last eyewitnesses are passing away, and even more so, at a time when
nationalism is on the rise in Europe.

‘The only response to this crime is to make it everyone’s crime. To share it. Just as we share the ideas of equality and fraternity. To bear it, to tolerate the idea of it, to share the crime.’