Love me tender

A woman, a successful lawyer in the state capital, decides after twenty years of marriage to leave her family so she can test herself, live life anew, devote her time to writing and fall in love again – or perhaps not to love anymore at all, just to desire. The price for this ‘self-dispossession’ is her husband forcibly separating her from their eight-year-old son and instigating a custody battle under false pretences. The protagonist is paralysed with pain and works hard to acquire physical strength and an emotional armour via manic daily swimming sessions. She fights for her son, who is growing increasingly distant from her, and wavers between a multitude of emotions: anger, fear, the desire for casual sex and the need for intimacy. She experiences a deep inner emptiness and yet, at the same time, a freedom that she has never known before. The writer Constance Debré takes a long hard look at social norms, and at herself. Following on from ‘Nora’, ‘Die Freiheit einer Frau’ and ‘Baumeister Solness’, continues her passionate exploration of the contradictions in women’s life plans and interprets ‘Love Me Tender’ (translated into German by Max Henninger, published by Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024) with a powerful performance for three exceptional actresses and (live) video.

“I’m interested in the fragility that arises at the moment you abandon the desire to fulfil societal expectations and to live a life that is celebrated as ‘right’; when you discard the nice, smooth, perfect images. This also applies in the theatre, on stage. Because there is never any certainty.”

– Felicitas Brucker