Theatre: The Vice-Consul (Marguerite Duras)

Marguerite Duras has constantly permeated my life through her lucidity, the injustice she denounced, her cinematic, dramatic writing, and her unparalleled sensuality.

Maud Andrieux

Upon returning from her first trip to Vietnam in 2003, she encountered the writing of Marguerite Duras, and it was a true literary revelation. This simple, repetitive, and cinematic style inspired her to adapt the 400-page novel into a one-woman show. Her director, Gilbert Tiberghien, encouraged her to direct the production. She then founded the Compagnie du Barrage.

She played Suzanne in *Un barrage contre le Pacifique* (The Sea Wall) in 2004. This marked the beginning of her international career, starting with performances in Saigon for Yann Andrea, Duras's partner, and at the temples of Angkor for the French Embassy commemorating the 10th anniversary of her death in 2006. She continued to perform this play in France, then in Southeast Asia, Turkey, and Morocco through the network of French Institutes. She discovered that her passion for this particular style of writing resonated especially with students learning French abroad. The simplicity and rhythm of the words facilitated learning and provided access to the fundamental history linking Indochina and France, as well as the author's own story.

In 2010, she adapted Marguerite Duras's *The Vice-Consul*, which she performed in Paris, Bordeaux, Calcutta, Chandigarh, and New Delhi in 2014 for the Duras Centenary. For Maud Andrieux, this was an opportunity to bring the text back to lands where the writer had only spent a few hours during a stopover on her journey from Indochina to France.

She was then appointed Artistic Director of the Marguerite Duras Touring Theatre and programmed several talented companies each year who had chosen to perform Duras.

In 2014, she adapted Marguerite Duras's *La douleur et Monsieur X dit ici Pierre Rabier* (The Pain and Mr. X, also known as Pierre Rabier), focusing on her involvement in the Resistance after the deportation of her husband, Robert Antelme, and her meeting with François Mitterrand, then head of the network. Maud Andrieux performed this play in Paris, Bordeaux, at the Bratyajon International Theatre Festival in Calcutta, where she represented France, and in Delhi, Kathmandu, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Chandigarh, Pune, and other cities.

In 2017 she signed the adaptation of The Lover and The North China Lover and in 2018 she flew to Chennai, Pondicherry, Chandigarh, Bombay, Hyderabad, Pune and Calcutta to perform it.

She has been adapting, directing, and performing Duras's novels for nearly 20 years in France and abroad (Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, India, Italy, Turkey, Morocco, Canada, etc.). She has been developing the emblematic character of Anne-Marie Stretter, a Venetian figure in Duras's work, and has produced a new work which she performed at the Alliance Française in Venice in 2018.

In 2019, she created Le Cambodge de Marguerite Duras tracing the journey of the beggar woman of Battambang, a recurring character in her work, and performed at the Inauguration of the Cultural Season of the Alliance Française of Siem Reap in Cambodia accompanied by the cellist Cécile Lacharme.

In 2023, she adapted "Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert" (Her Name of Venice in Desert Calcutta), which she recently performed on a tour of the Alliance Française network in India. She celebrates Francophonie Day and the 110th anniversary of Duras (1914-2024) with this new tour in English-speaking Canada, from Toronto to Calgary, including stops in Ottawa, Halifax, and Edmonton.

Maud Andrieux is a member of the International Marguerite Duras Society and is regularly featured at the Duras Encounters in Trouville, where she has notably performed in L'Eté 80, Autour d'Anne-Marie Stretter, Le Cambodge de MD, La Vie Matérielle…