Marion Siéfert

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«_ jeanne_dark_» is an Instagram performance par excellence – effectively filtered and highly entertaining. But the show by French director and author Marion Siéfert is also a strong piece of theatre: A hymn to self-promotion and onlooking, a reflexion on the dangers of social media’s hypernormative spaces. The performer Helena de Laurens embodies Jeanne, a rather conformist, seemingly harmless 16-year-old, who grows up in a thoroughly catholic home in a suburb of Orleans. She is not exactly popular and is frequently bullied. But as @_ jeanne_dark on Instagram, she begins to strike poses and to create her own characters. She plays and dances with her smartphone, settles outstanding scores, dresses up and tells stories. She cannot stop talking and is obviously having a ball.

The spectators can watch this metamorphosis on stage and on two video projections of the Instagram livestream – or as her followers on the platform itself. Right before our eyes, Jeanne fragments her personality into a thousand pieces – and reinvents herself bit by bit. (af )