Jessica Astier brings her triumphal one-woman show to Théâtre de la Cité in Nice, giving women from days gone by a voice to express themselves.
There are performers who play a role, and then there are performers who become it. Jessica Astier falls squarely into the second category. In Du Domaine des Murmures, she inhabits a 12th-century noblewoman named Esclarmonde for seventy-five unbroken minutes, alone on stage, no ensemble, no safety net. She also wrote the adaptation of Carole Martinez’ eponymous award-winning novel, and on 8 March, for International Women’s Day, she brings Esclarmonde home to the Théâtre de la Cité in Nice – the stage where her own ascent as an artist began.
The story Jessica Astier has chosen to tell on stage is timeless. Set in long-bygone times, it is as pertinent today as it was in 1187, when on her wedding day Esclarmonde looks at the man her father has chosen for her and says no. She then asks to be walled into a cell for the rest of her life. The wall was supposed to be a punishment. It turned out to be a pulpit.
The cell in question is a real historical institution. Medieval recluses, almost always women, were voluntarily enclosed in small chambers adjoining churches, fed through a narrow window, and expected to pray in perpetuity. What the Church intended as an act of pious withdrawal became, in practice, something far more interesting. Cut off from the politics and obligations of the world outside, these women became confessors, counsellors and moral authorities. People travelled considerable distances to speak to them through that window.
From inside her stone cell, Esclarmonde does exactly this: she hears the confessions of crusaders preparing for the Holy Land, guides pilgrims, soothes the grieving, and gradually bends the will of her own father, who thought he had disposed of a problem and discovers instead that he has created an oracle.
But Esclarmonde is not alone in those walls as a passage from the text reveals:
The walls blur with a crowd of whispers, the stone screen cracks open onto a teeming beyond, and we agree to fall into the abyss, to draw from it the liquid voices of forgotten women seeping all around us. The Domaine des Murmures is not built of stone so much as of voices.”
— Esclamonde
Astier stands on that stage as their vessel. What looks like a solo performance is, in this light, something closer to a chorus – and what gives Jounée de la Femme its full meaning here: one woman, carrying all of them.
Jessica Astier is one of the most versatile young artists working in the region today: actress, painter, graphic artist and set designer, with a CV that ranges from Shakespeare to Brecht and from European television productions. Thierry Surace, director of Théâtre de la Cité discovered and honed her talent years ago. Her role in the house company Miranda’s flagship show Dom Juan et les Clowns, directed by Irina Brook, became Jessica’s stepping stone. Du Domaine des Murmures is her first solo creation, and the leap it represents, from ensemble actress to sole author of every dimension of a production, is considerable. That it has earned sustained acclaim across France says everything about the artist she has become.
Artistic director William Mesguich brings to this production the kind of authority that only comes from having lived inside great texts. A classically trained actor who has inhabited Hamlet, Macbeth and Richard III, and a director whose range spans Hugo, Molière and Lorca, he approaches Du Domaine des Murmures not as a period piece to be illustrated but as a living argument to be made.
Photo © Photo Lot
In Esclarmonde he has found a character worthy of his ambitions, placing her in a deliberate lineage: Olympe de Gouges, Jeanne d’Arc, Louise Michel, Mary Magdalene. What these women share is a particular intransigence, the refusal to make themselves smaller in order to be tolerated, and the price each paid for it. Esclarmonde is their medieval ancestor, her story female emancipation in the only form her century made available. That he also designed the lighting is characteristic — this is an artist who thinks in complete worlds.
A play set in 1187 could easily veer toward a history lesson, but this story is thoroughly modern. The idea that female authority is most tolerable when exercised quietly, from the margins, through influence rather than power, has proved remarkably durable. Esclarmonde inhabits that constraint so completely that it transforms around her, which is a more honest portrait of how change actually happens than most contemporary theatre attempts.
Since its Paris premiere at the Théâtre du Lucernaire in spring 2024, the tour has taken in Avignon’s Festival OFF, Toulon, and Monaco, where it closed the entire summer season at the Théâtre du Fort Antoine. That sustained life on the road makes the Nice date all the more meaningful. It was here that Jessica Astier first found her stage voice. On 8 March, she comes home.
VISITOR INFORMATION
Du Domaine des Murmures | Théâtre de la Cité, Nice
Sunday, 8 March 2026 | 18.00 h
Admission: €20 / €15 | Online reservations
VENUE INFORMATION
Théatre de la Cité
3, rue Paganini
06000 Nice
Tel: +33 (0)4 93 16 82 69
PHOTO CREDITS
- All photos and images courtesy Théâtre de la Cité and Jessica Astier
- Lead image © Photo Lot; all other photos as credited
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