In 2021, the hashtag #MeTooThéâtre began trending on social media in France. Thousands of stories about sexual abuse and harassment in the country’s theaters and drama schools poured in. Calls for change followed, starting with an open letter signed by 1,450 public figures in the newspaper Libération.
The movement quickly coalesced into a collective that took the hashtag as its name and has remained a prominent presence over the past three years. It published an eponymous book of essays in 2022, and has pushed theater institutions to stop hiring aggressors and better protect victims, holding demonstrations in front of playhouses including the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris.
Still, many in the French theater world know #MeTooThéâtre best through its Instagram presence: terse statements in black letters over a yellow background, which read like a running commentary on the abuse cases that have come to light.
Now, the collective’s five most active members are putting faces to the hashtag. This season, they have crafted their first stage production, “Les Histrioniques” (“The Histrionic Ones”), which is playing at the Théâtre de Belleville in Paris through Jan. 28. In it, the group pulls no punches, while also lifting the veil in witty, revelatory fashion on other aspects of its activism — starting with the personal cost.
That is no easy feat, because a social movement is tricky to capture in real time onstage. In the case of #MeTooThéâtre, there is the added threat of being sued for defamation — a very tangible prospect in France, where a number of men charged with abuse have won judgments against their accusers.
The cast of “Les Histrioniques” playfully skewers that reality from the get-go, lining up in sunglasses on the theater’s small stage. “We created a fictional space so that you and we are safe,” one performer said, stressing the word “safe” with a touch of irony. “It’s time to show you the faces of the actors playing us,” said another, before the performers removed their sunglasses, one by one, to cheers from the opening-night audience.
In recurring scenes, the women re-enact the instant messages they exchanged in the private messenger group they created in 2021, down to the emojis they sent as reactions. They face the audience, rather than each other, like a chorus, and describe what they were each doing as the hashtag took off online — working at a school, rehearsing for shows, caring for a baby.
It’s an affecting retelling, because instead of the angry mob that some French media outlets have painted them as, the five cast members step forward as individuals with complex lives, who started their campaign for varied reasons. One, Marie Coquille-Chambel, a budding theater researcher who initiated the hashtag on Twitter, was a victim of domestic violence from her ex-partner, a member of the Comédie-Française troupe. (He was found guilty in 2021.) The four others — Louise Brzezowska-Dudek, Nadège Cathelineau, Séphora Haymann and Julie Ménard — are actors, playwrights and directors with direct experience, as they tell it, of gender inequality in the performing arts.
And they bring their theatrical craft to “Les Histrioniques,” which is co-credited to all five as well as the set designer Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes. In between the group discussion scenes, they segue into spirited re-enactments: a class with a guru-like professor at a French conservatory, scenes between a stage director accused of rape and the head of a prominent theater. All these characters are given fictional names, though some are clearly inspired by publicized cases.
Cathelineau navigates the role of the accused stage director with special gusto and comic timing, at one point launching into a tragedian’s complaint in verse. She also leads the group in a catchy rap song, inspired by the hashtag #ExposeYourPig that trended early in France’s reckoning with #MeToo. “We expose pigs, you fatten them up,” they chant, building to a feverish pitch.
There are moments of outright anger and disgust like this scattered throughout “Les Histrioniques,” but the cast smartly balances them with episodes that show emotional range. Coquille-Chambel, the only cast member without drama training, speaks with eloquent reserve of the hate, rape and death threats she has received on social media. Brzezowska-Dudek plays a memorable chain-vaping administrator who poses as an ally, yet would rather not fire his male friends.
Haymann hits some of the show’s most painful notes when she describes growing up a daughter of immigrants and losing faith in France’s justice system. All five women grapple with the reality of activism behind the scenes: unpaid, invisible work; lost opportunities; a backlog of victims; too few resources.
Movingly, Ménard remembers the moment when her commitment wavered, as well-meaning friends and family warned her to step back. Yet the reckoning is far from over: One figure the production hints at, the actor Philippe Caubère, made headlines just last week after new accusations from underage victims appeared in Libération. With “Les Histrioniques,” the collective is giving the audience a sense of what it takes to actually bring such stories to light.
Les Histrioniques
Through Jan. 28 at the Théâtre de Belleville in Paris; theatredebelleville.com.
