BAM in association with L’Alliance New York’s Crossing The Line Festival presents
LACRIMA
Written and directed by Caroline Guiela Nguyen
Schedule
Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Thursday, October 23, 2025
Friday, October 24, 2025
Saturday, October 25, 2025
Sunday, October 26, 2025
US Premiere
In French, with scenes in French Sign Language, Tamil and English, with English surtitles
Duration: 175 minutes
When the Princess of England announces her engagement, a Parisian haute couture fashion house receives an extraordinary commission, and a fascinating story unfolds across continents and generations. Renowned theater maker Caroline Guiela Nguyen transforms the stage into a bustling workshop floor in this sprawling play about the hands that make the garments we covet.
Sworn to complete secrecy, craftspeople around the world embark on eight months of intricate labor in service of a single wedding dress. Marion, the overworked head seamstress of Maison Beliana, fields tough questions from her troubled daughter, while Thérèse, an Alençon lacemaker, comes face to face with a complicated family past. Meanwhile, across the ocean in Mumbai, master embroiderer Abdul fastens 1,000 roses onto duchesse satin as his eyesight rapidly deteriorates. As these men and women all but obliterate themselves in pursuit of perfection, LACRIMA invites us into the space between that which destroys us and that which gives our lives purpose.
“The point LACRIMA makes is that lots of invisible work, much of it underpaid and done in poor conditions, goes into a fashion statement like a royal wedding dress… As international festivals go, Avignon is working hard to tell such rarely heard stories — and overall, it’s paying off.” — Laura Cappelle, The New York Times
Venue
Caroline Guiela Nguyen
Caroline Guiela Nguyen is an author as well as a director for both the stage and the screen. After starting out as a sociology student, she joined TnS drama school, she founded her own theatre company, Les Hommes Approximatifs in 2009. Their work focuses on bodies and histories that are often overlooked by the theatre, creating ambitious fictional tales in collaboration with both professional and non-professional actors. Along with her team, she has crafted an aesthetic that influences their productions.
Since 2011, Caroline Guiela Nguyen and her company’s notable works include Se souvenir de Violetta at the Comédie de Valence Theatre, followed by Ses Mains (2012), Le Bal d’Emma (2013), Elle brûle (2013), and Le Chagrin (2015). From 2013 onwards, her shows toured throughout France, performing notably at prestigious theaters and festivals.
From 2015, she collaborated with directors Joël Pommerant and Jean Ruimi on her partnership with Arles’ high-security prison to create performances with a troupe of inmates. In 2020, she shot her first film, Les Engloutis, and she made a radio play for France Culture as part of their ‘Radiodrama’ series, called Le Chagrin (Julie et Vincent).
In 2017 SAIGON debuted, a show first presented at the the Ambivalence(s) festival, before transferring to the 71st edition of the Festival of Avignon. In 2021, for the 75th edition of the Avignon Festival, she made FRATERNITÉ, Conte fantastique, performing over 130 times throughout France and Europe. Invited by Berlin’s Schaubühne, she made an original production entitled KINDHEITSARCHIVE, a fiction weaving together different adoption stories.
In 2023, she began rehearsals for her next project, LACRIMA, that unfolds in three textile workshops—an haute couture fashion house in Paris, a traditional lace-maker in Alençon, and an embroiderer’s in Mumbai. In the fall of 2023, Nguyen officially took over as Director of the National Theatre of Strasbourg (TnS) and its drama school.
Billing Credits
Written and directed by Carolina Guiela Nguyen
Set design by Alice Duchange
Costume design and haute couture pieces by Benjamin Moreau
Lighting design by Mathilde Chamoux and Jérémie Papin
Sound design by Antoine Richard
Music composition by Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Teddy Gauliat-Pitois and Antoine Richard
Video and motion design by Jérémie ScheidlerProduction Credits
Production: Théâtre national de Strasbourg
Co-produced by: Festival TransAmériques de Montréal (Canada); La Comédie – Centre dramatique national de Reims; Points communs — Nouvelle scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise; Théâtres de la Ville du Luxembourg; Centro Dramático Nacional de Madrid (Espagne); Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa (Italie); Wiener Festwochen | Freie Republik Wien (Autriche); Théâtre de Liège (Belgique); Théâtre national de Bretagne – Centre dramatique national, Festival d’Avignon, Les Hommes Approximatifs
With the support of the Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe, du Centre national des dramaturgies contemporaines (CNDC) – Théâtre Ouvert, la Maison Jacques Copeau, le Musée des Beaux-arts et de la Dentelle d’Alençon, l’Institut Français de New Dehli et l’Alliance française de Mumbaï
Preview performances from 14 to 18 May 2024 at the Théâtre national de Strasbourg
Premiere, May 30, Wiener Festwochen Freie Republik WienSupported by Theatre & New Forms, a program of Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation.
About BAM
For more than 160 years, BAM has been a thriving, urban multi-arts complex renowned for presenting an unparalleled roster of visionary and cutting-edge dance, theater, music, opera, visual arts, literature, and film engagements. Attracting more than 750,000 people annually to its home in Brooklyn, BAM provides a welcoming cultural stage and meeting place for global and local communities of all backgrounds. BAM’s distinctive multi-theater campus is alive year-round with inspired new engagements and signature programs alike including the renowned Next Wave (one of the world’s most influential festivals of contemporary performing arts, founded in 1983), the iconic DanceAfrica, an acclaimed repertory film program, and literary, archival, educational and humanities programs. For more information visit BAM.org.
Support for Crossing The Line
and The Wescustogo Foundation
L’Alliance New York’s programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the Support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Header Image: Lacrima © Jean Louis Fernandez
Caroline Guiela Nguyen headshot: © Manuel Braun
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