Voies de Colette: entre plume et scène" symposium

If 2023 celebrated one hundred and fifty years since Colette's birth, 2024 marks the seventieth anniversary of the passing of this seminal figure in women's creative work during the first half of the twentieth century.
The recent musical show, Music Hall Colette by Cléo Sénia, directed by Léna Bréban, performed in January 2024 at the Théâtre Tristan Bernard (artist Cléo Sénia's nomination for the Molière for female revelation, in May 2024), prove just how far Colette has tipped over into iconic status for new generations.

Teaser for the show Music-Hall Colette (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y68l1sdDrnQ)

It is around this last show that this colloquium "Voies de Colette: entre plume et scène" intends to lead a transdisciplinary reflection on what Colette's voice can have in its own right, in its specific articulation between the world of the stage and that of books, where it jointly develops its creative capacities. In partnership with local cultural structures - Valenciennes' national stage Le Phénix, which will host part of the discussions, and the Le Quesnoy en chanteurs festival, which will program the show Music Hall Colette at the Théâtre des Trois Chênes on November 22 - this symposium aims to cross disciplinary perspectives, in an attempt to shed light on precisely how a complex yet coherent creative dynamic was able to unfold in both this literary and spectacular direction. Colette's birthday therefore seems an opportune occasion to highlight possible links between Colette's ability to shine on stage, and her talents for illuminating the sensuality of the scenes she created through her writing. Approaches will necessarily be multidisciplinary, but will aim to question the threads stretched by these two modes of representation, the pen and the stage. The symposium will also consider the link between a transgeneric artistic project and a dynamic of emancipation (creative, economic and symbolic), which responds in a complex way to the intrinsic vulnerability of women in the patriarchal society of the early 20th century. Is going beyond conventional boundaries, displaying this publicly, on stage and on the page, to be received as a form of resistance, even resilience, or should we just consider several juxtaposed facets of a fertile personality?