When the theater questions the bond, love and what makes sense in adolescence: don't miss "Il faut que l'on s'aime" Wednesday evening at the Espace Tisot in La Seyne
She speaks of stolen, wounded, fractured adolescence in a world losing its bearings. Since 2023 and Il faut que tu m'aimes le jour où j'aimerai pour la première fois sans toi - created in partnership with the Scène nationale Châteauvallon Liberté - Alexandra Cismondi from Seyne has nourished the collective memory through the prism of a youth with weighty pain. Symptoms of a truth that sometimes we don't hear. That we don't want to hear. A powerful text about a family struck by grief, after the tragic death of their teenager in dramatic circumstances. What follows is the absence with which we must learn to live. A message carried by a staging between tale and poetry of the absurd, as Alexandra Cismondi likes to make her words resonate.
Today, the artist continues, with her company Vertiges, her adolescent crisis with two short formats, born from this grieving family. "The show was performed for three weeks at the Paris-Villette theater, which also offered me to adapt the text and the staging to perform it in middle and high schools," she explains.
She lends herself to the game of recomposition through a master class – again offered by the Paris-Villette theater – with young students fresh out of theater school.
Themes from the show, excerpts from the text, deleted scenes all feed into the material: "It's extremely interesting for an artist, because suddenly, you re-enter the creation process a year or two later. You dive back in and realize the points you had chosen not to explore…", confides Alexandra Cismondi. A new introspection in the writing that results in two short formats of around thirty minutes.
What does it mean to be "together"?On stage, five of the young actors, with whom she worked in a master class, take on roles in these two episodes in the lives of a few middle school/high school students who commit, search, stammer, and scream. These young people (and their bizarre, wildly invested and/or totally depressed teachers) find that language says too much or not enough. That action is also necessary, that the times are devastating, that no one is doing anything, that love doesn't always begin with the lips. And they discover the strength of the group through an event, an action, a sex education or empathy class.
And above all, what does it mean to be together? To experience things together? To decide to change things and perhaps repair things together? To convey this message, Alexandra Cismondi calls upon her baroque and slightly offbeat, colorful stage universe... To laugh, to be moved, and above all to question. "We will (really) have to love each other very much to continue to hold together the world we live in." Without losing our minds.
On tour next yearIntended to be performed in middle and high schools, I l faut que l'on s'aimer nevertheless appeals to everyone, which is why it is being presented on Wednesday, May 21st to all audiences (from 14 years old) at the Espace Tisot in La Seyne.
Thanks to a partnership with the Scène nationale Châteauvallon-Liberté, the show will be touring schools next October.
It will also be offered by Le Pôle in December, then Le Carré Sainte-Maxime in spring 2026.
, written and directed by Alexandra Cismondi, on May 21 at 8:30 p.m. at the Espace Tisot in La Seyne. with Lea Casadamont, Ella Grizard, Come Luquet, Marie-Lou Nessi, Elio Massignat. Music: Benoît Olive / Cyril Colombo. Lighting design: Yann Gobert. A co-production between Vertiges Cie and the Théâtre Paris Villette. Prices: 15 euros. Res. 04.94.06.94.77.
A novel in 2026A multidisciplinary artist, Alexandra Cismondi explores writing in another form: a novel, to be published next year by Anne Carrière. The story of a young woman who loses the person she loves in a terrible scooter accident. An experience the author herself lived in Paris. Between the memories of a dream life and reality, we go back in time, to the moment they met. "And it's the whole story of a discovery of a sexual identity, gender, life, and social and family positioning in the 2000s, in fact, from 2000 to 2007, which were years when gay marriage was not allowed..." confides Alexandra Cismondi. A fictional novel, feminist but imbued with the author's own life, which also questions how to become a woman today when you have no idea who you are.
Meanwhile, the actress is also in the cast of the short program Interim'air , on Teva. A series produced by Dominique Farrugia, written and performed by Joséphine Draï. "She was able to recreate a family of actors, a gang in the style of Splendid," praises Alexandra Cismondi, who acts but also co-wrote certain scenes.
He's in the cast of Il faut que l'on s'aime: Elio Massignat will be a bailiff, a clerk, the accused, the guilty party, a lover, a sort of ringmaster in Alexandra Cismondi's next theatrical production. Magistral.es The story of a trial for the rape of an 11-year-old girl.
The Sarah case, or the so-called Pontoise case in the media, dates back to 2017. It involved an 11-year-old girl raped by a 28-year-old man. "The girl said during the trial that he couldn't have known she wasn't consenting because she never said no, the man said he didn't know she was only 11 because she looked like a 16-year-old." Sentenced once to eight years in prison, he was retried on appeal and had his sentence reduced. This case triggered the change in the threshold for consent in the law.
While working on this project, Alexandra Cismondi realized that 86% of justice professions were occupied by women " it is women who keep the judicial machine running. I was interested in these female figures and I created a casting where we will have an investigating judge, a public prosecutor or public prosecutor, a defense lawyer and a civil party lawyer..." and only one man: the accused.
"I like the idea of a play that really puts theater back in the middle of the city."
Above all, Alexandra Cismondi will reenact the trial every night on stage. Some spectators, amateur actors, will be called to the bar to testify as investigators, lawyers, representatives of feminist associations, etc. Others, finally, will be chosen completely arbitrarily, to take on the role of juror. And to judge the accused. " I like the idea of a play that really puts theater back in the middle of the city, like in ancient Greece." This new creation is expected to be presented in the fall of 2026.KM
This creation is supported by the Châteauvallon-Liberté National Scene, Le Pôle, the Théâtre des Halles in Avignon, the Martigues National Scene, the Passerelle National Scene in Gap, and the Paris-Villette Theater in Paris.
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