Sable Venus – have we seen these two words together before? French film director Alice Diop’s very first feature film, Saint Omer, was already rewarded with the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. She now presents her first work for theatre, which is based on a revolutionary text. It is an essay by American poet Robin Coste Lewis that turns the entire Western history of art upside down, reading it from the utterly new perspective of the black female figure. Inspired by Lewis’ approach, Diop takes the audience on a fascinating journey. In a radically simple theatrical set up that comprises only a table, her own body and the text, what emerges is a pictorial stream that goes beyond all imagination. It is a mind-changing theatre experience, or as the text says: „The Voyage of the Sable Venus is an epic written in one line.“
By and with Alice Diop Text Robin Coste Lewis Translation, Artistic collaboration Nicholas Elliott Outside Eye Thierry Thieû Niang Light design Marie-Christine Soma Costumes LEMAIRE Rehearsal direction Léa Boublil Props design, Stage management Lucie Basclet Translation review Jean-Philippe Tessé Stage design, Technics, Production the team of MC93 Lighting control Pascal Alidra Biron Audio direction Emmanuelle Loève
Production MC93 — Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis, Festival d’Automne à Paris Coproduction Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) | Freie Republik Wien, Comédie de Genève, La Comédie de Valence – CDN Drôme-Ardèche, Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Le Rideau de Bruxelles, Centre Dramatique National Orléans – Centre-Val de Loire, MansA – Maison des Mondes Africains (Paris) Performance rights The text by Robin Coste Lewis, in its French translation, was published by Éditions Gallimard in November 2025.
World premiere November 2025, Festival d’Automne à Paris (MC93 – Maison de la Culture)
The performances in Vienna are supported by the Institut Français d'Autriche.
