Loosely inspired on Camille Claudel’s life and artwork

Production 1997
Written, directed and performed by: Alessandra De Santis
Light: Monia Giannobile
Assistant: Attilio Nicoli Cristiani

In 1881, at the age of 17, Camille Claudel made the irrevocable decision to be a “woman sculptor”. This decision, along with her passionate but stormy relationship with the great sculptor Auguste Rodin, would prove fatal. She would die in an insane asylum, where she was horribly interned for over thirty years, leaving behind an exceptional ensemble of sculptures with rare visionary power.

I wasn’t interested in talking about madness, but about the alienation connected with being female as well as an artist: the impossibility of being normal. The figure who wanders across the stage is not mentally ill but merely underprivileged, a woman who expresses her rage and pain with the same power and passion that distinguished her approach to life and art.

This was not about discovering or saying something new about her, but seeking a language that would give room to the voice of the medium that would resound in the words, silences and living body of the actor.