Romancero Queer: Virginie Despentes gives voice to an age in struggle

From May 20 to June 22, 2025, the Théâtre national de La Colline will host Romancero Queer, Virginie Despentes ' new creation as author and director. The writer and director will be reunited with the cast of Woke, her previous show staged in 2024. Known for her hard-hitting texts and her feminist and queer commitment, Despentes focuses here on how intimate identities and social struggles resonate in an era marked by brutality, precariousness and inequality.

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Romancero Queer will be a choral show, featuring voices of concern, anger and hope. Through bodies and words, the stage would be traversed by individual and collective narratives evoking fragility, resistance, humor as a survival tool, and the urgency of being oneself, whatever the cost. Drawing on the dynamics of the romancero - a traditional Spanish poetic form - Despentes would propose a succession of contemporary, political and poetic tableaux, in which personal emotions collide with the harshness of the world.

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This show could appeal primarily to audiences interested in queer, feminist and activist themes, but also to those who follow Virginie Despentes' literary or stage work. Audiences drawn to a kind of engaged theater that questions relations of domination and brings minority voices to the fore may also find an echo here. On the other hand, the explicit political content, emotional intensity and sometimes radical dimension of the project may be less suited to audiences looking for light entertainment or more conventional storytelling.

With Romancero Queer, Virginie Despentes would continue to explore the stage as a place for speaking and sharing, capable of expressing trouble and violence, but also the tenderness and joy of existing differently. The show would be part of a contemporary dynamic of theater-documentary, at the crossroads of struggles and experiences, without ever renouncing humor or collective energy.

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This article is based on publicly available information and is not based on direct observation of the show.

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