Emilie ROUSSET
Country: France
Biography
Émilie Rousset is a French director who uses archives and documentary research to create performances, installations, and films. She develops a montage writing style that plays with the gap between the document and its staging to better explore the archives of our contemporary societies.
Her productions have been presented in major museums (Centre Pompidou, MUCEM, Grand Palais). She is an associate artist in many national theaters, with pieces presented in several editions of the Festival d’Automne. Recently, she created one of the pieces for Shared Landscapes, a collective work curated by C. Barneaud and S. Kaegi, presented outdoors across eight European countries (Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, Festival d’Avignon, Berliner Festspiele, Zona K & Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Temporada Alta, Culturgest…). Her latest piece, Family Matters, premiered at the Festival d’Avignon 2025. She is now developing an outdoor play, Larks – A Field Piece, which will premiere at Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in 2026.
She is also the artistic director of the CDNO – Centre Dramatique National d’Orléans, where she curates contemporary work, particularly documentary and performative forms.
Portfolio & Latest Theatre Performances :
Website : https://johncorporation.org/en/accueil
Emilie Rousset uses documentary archives as theatrical material. Her new production, Family Matters, is based on encounters with lawyers and litigants across Europe, and recounts intimate stories confronted with the law. Seven European actors re-enact these encounters, the space is filled with the voices and bodies of these stories, and each situation invites us to reflect as a society. A lawyer specializing in child abduction, a lawyer who is an expert in LGBT parenting, the Italian father of a child born through surrogacy, a Spanish member of Mossos d’Esquadra, silenced reports of incest, and victories in the European Court of Human Rights — with each of these cases, justice is challenged by the social tensions and changes in society.
Language on Stage : Texts performed in French will be subtitled. Texts performed in Spanish, Italian, or Portuguese will be translated live on stage into French and/or English. For international tours, a local lawyer’s testimony may be integrated into the performance.
Artistic Statement
I have been pursuing the same line of research for more than ten years: working with archives and interviews, and inventing devices that allow these voices to be heard differently. My work often takes the form of an investigation. It always begins with an encounter that sparks an intuition. I love that moment when a story imposes itself — a voice, a tone, a way of speaking that calls for a scenic device and awakens the desire to invent a form. From there, the research unfolds: I read, I listen, I question, I collect, and I let the materials speak to one another. It’s not about telling a story but about understanding how reality can be replayed in order to renew our perception, how a voice can be transmitted without becoming fixed. I write through editing, juxtaposition, and displacement. I create devices that stage the collective. I create works that open spaces for thought.
Trailer
