Created in October 2026 at Théâtre 140, Brussels.
INTENTION NOTES:
Cordelia ou la chair ingrate (formerly L’Ombre de Lear, then Lear ou la caresse des épines) is a one-woman show with puppets and objects.
A young woman is at her father’s wake. Alone with his body, images from her childhood come back to her in fragments. Memories of violence, only, and a story he always told her: that of a king, very old and very tired, who one day decides to bequeath his kingdom to his daughters in exchange for proof of their unconditional filial love.
By drawing a parallel between her father’s violent behavior and that of King Lear in Shakespeare’s play of the same name, the young woman attempts to come to terms with her personal history.
She comes to understand that this violence, which has woven the bonds of love and hate that unite her to her father, has its origins in a system of oppression and class domination, and she seeks by every means to break free from this legacy.
To tell this story, I will use three puppets, all in the likeness of the father:
- A life-size puppet (with realistic proportions): the corpse, and the silent father of memories, imposing at first, then increasingly impotent as the play progresses.
- A muppet, with a floating body made of fabric reminiscent of a blanket, a comfort blanket, or a ghost: the father who can speak, but always through the young woman’s mouth (because she is the one who makes him speak), thus a kind of fantasy of the father with whom she can converse, and who always appears suddenly and at inopportune moments.
- A mask: when she wears it, the young woman becomes King Lear, or what she imagines King Lear to be. He evolves in another space-time, a kind of dreamlike breach—which does not prevent him, at times, from interacting with the other characters.
The action will take place around a small table, a Formica chair, and a small bed. Each element of the set can be repurposed to better serve the narrative. For example, the overturned bed can be used as a shadow puppet theater, representing the interior of the young woman’s childhood home.
To date, the play is structured around three acts: Legacy, Storm, and Distinction.
It alternates between . purely visual passages, which use puppetry to tell the story of the young woman’s relationship with her father;.
passages recounting her childhood: very concise testimonies that the young woman addresses to herself through the audience;
. dialogues between the young woman and the muppet father, in which she attempts to analyze and understand while struggling with the past that haunts her;
. and passages from Shakespeare’s text, a 1930 radio version (by Léon Ruth) broadcast through a toy radio, as if emerging from a distant memory, which the mask listens to and physically reinterprets in its own way.
These passages are not compartmentalized; the young woman slips from one to the other as if in a train of thought that is sometimes continuous and logical, sometimes disjointed, sometimes tangled.
Always with the question in mind: is it right, or even possible, to forgive the person who is supposed to love me most for having, partly through no fault of their own, worked to destroy me?
Director – actress – puppeteer: Leïla Devin
Outside perspective: Rebecca Fels
Sound designer: Matthieu Viley
Costume designer: Naïma Valiente
Set design: Rafaelle Roux
Lighting designer: Henrique Pizarro
Executive production: Le 140, Brussels
Co-production: Théâtre de Laval
At this stage of the work, we can only confirm that we will be performing in black boxes, for a maximum audience of 200 people, and will need
a maximum of one day for set-up.
The touring team will consist of three people (two stage managers and one actress).
The complete technical specifications will be available on September 26.