(le/the) Pain

For four generations of his family, baguettes have been made just as destinies have been passed down: without deviation. Jean-Daniel Broussé was expected to take over the family bakery in Béarn, south-western France. But he chose a different direction and to shape the subject matter of his own story. With the polished staging of his collaborator Ursula Martinez and a cloud of flour, he transforms the stage into a place of metamorphosis. This piece tells the story of a queer childhood in the provinces with the urgency of a present freed from the constraints of the patriarchy.

From the weight of tradition to the call of the artist’s life in England, (le/the) Pain sculpts a physical narrative that combines acrobatic prowess and dance in a performance that is as virtuoso as it is intimate. Between his pain and his pain (French for bread), Jean-Daniel Broussé embraces the very real gamble of reinventing himself.

22/10 - Unlearning to inherit - Small Talk with Jean Daniel Broussé, Robin Faymonville & Le Pain levé

How can you reinvent yourself when everything seems predetermined? In Le/The Pain, Jean-Daniel Broussé crafts an intimate narrative on stage — that of a queer childhood in the provinces, caught between the flour of the family bakery and the burning desire for freedom. Between bread and ‘pain,’ the stage becomes a space of fracture and reinvention.
In dialogue with Robin Faymontville, performance poet and craftsman of language, and Le Pain Levé, a revolutionary, self-managed bakery that breaks with tradition, this conversation opens up on legacies, bodies that emancipate themselves and inner landscapes where another existence is created.
A moment to question what it means to speak from the margins and to make intimacy a force for creation.