The young artist’s much-lauded one woman play VOLE! soars to the skies on the wings of her tremendous personality and talent
In 2014, during rehearsals for Niçois landmark play Le Procès, its director Félicien Chauveau made a comment between two scenes: “Keep an eye on her, she is an incredible actor, and she will become big, very big.” Chauveau would know, counting among the most promising French talents himself. “Her”, that is Éva Rami, and the same comment has since been repeated over and over by other brilliant theatre makers around France. Éva Rami is certainly a fine cast member but the true depth of her talent shows when she is alone on stage. In this most difficult of all theatrical disciplines, she dominates the space with a presence, intelligence, energy, and finesse that is reminiscent only of Isabelle Huppert.
Vole! is one such play, written and performed by the young artist herself. In fact, since its 2014 première, it has become Éva’s signature play. Somewhere between autobiography and self-portrait, this solo is the story of Elsa, a young woman at the threshold of adulthood. She psychoanalyzes her childhood and youth, sees the world through the eyes of her loved ones, and tries to put her encounters and the small events that have dotted her path through life so far into context. With just a suitcase and a wicker chair as stage décor, Éva embarks on an intimate odyssey at the cross roads of humour, self-mockery, poetry, and tragedy. Over its course, the personal story shifts to a transgenerational one, tinged with a Sartrian flavour and deeply rooted in Simone de Beauvoir’s famous quote, “You are not born a woman, you become one.”
After touring at great French stages to standing ovations and receiving enthusiastic critics at festivals all over the country, Vole! is now back in Nice at Théâtre Francis Gag on April 20 at 8.30pm.
Talent is one thing but Éva also has impeccable professional training. A 2008 graduate from the Conservatoire National de Région de Nice, she continued her education at Jean-Claude Cotillard’s prestigious École Supérieure d’Art Dramatique de Paris. A gifted writer since her childhood, she takes her inspiration from everyday life and the people in it. As a prodigious and hard-working actor and director, she hungers for complex roles, best suited to show off her nuanced play. Argentinian-born and raised in Nice, Éva performs all over France but does enjoy coming back home to work with Collectif La Machine – unforgotten her representations in Le Procès, Don QuiXote or Peter Pan – or as Charlotte in Compagnie Miranda’s Dom Juan… et les Clowns, directed by Irina Brook. This past March she also opened the tenth edition of Françoise Nahon’s annual Femmes en Scènes festival with T’es toi, the sequel to Vole!
Without doubt, Vole! is one of those plays that have put Nice on the map as a premier theatre city in France, and don’t just take Félicien Chauveau’s word for it – see for yourself why Éva Rami, with the raw energy of her play and the subtlety of her performance, is rapidly becoming the new face of French acting.
VOLE! (in French)
Text: Éva Rami
Directed by Marc Ernotte
Lights: Luc Khiari
Production: L’Éternel Été
CONTACT DETAILS
Théâtre Francis Gag
4, rue de la Croix
06300 Nice
Tel: +33 (0)4 92 00 78 50
Lead image courtesy Éva Rami, used with her express permission
Leave a comment