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Ma chambre froide
Joël Pommerat
Ma chambre froide
photo Elisabeth Carecchio
Actes du théâtre n° 0.[ imprimer ]
The action takes place in a department store where the owner develops a serious illness and decides to leave everything to his employees, on the condition that they stage a play telling the story of his life. Estelle, an honest and devoted cleaning lady, is the staff scapegoat. But she is convinced that humanity is fundamentally good and strives to find meaning in their cruelty through the symbolic language of dreams and seizes the opportunity to stage the play.

"A rich, dense, complex and indefinable play covering all genres – from thriller to TV series, hagiography, social drama, theatrical essay and economic chronicle. Like all of Joël Pommerat’s plays it is both dark and luminous, a human comedy in every sense of the term, blending laughter and tears, and moments of joy with anguish and hopelessness.”
Didier Mereuze, La Croix, March 11, 2011

“Pommerat’s strength […] lies in combining different possibilities and leaving all options open in a patchwork narrative that creates an admirable account of the thousand facets of reality, thus bringing out its fantastic side. […] And there is a funny side to this ‘cold room’ full of fantasies in which life competes with death, violence with passionate love, and tenderness with terror.”
Fabienne Pascaud, Télérama, March 9, 2011

Opened March 2, 2011 at the Odéon Théâtre de l’Europe/ Ateliers Berthier. Then on tour at the Théâtre National de Bruxelles, Châteauvallon / Centre national de création et de diffusions culturelles, Théâtre National Populaire Villeurbanne, Théâtre d’Arras / Scène conventionnée musique et théâtre, Espace Malraux / Scène nationale de Chambéry et de la Savoie, Bonlieu / Scène nationale d’Annecy, Scène nationale de Cavaillon et la communauté des spectateurs, Théâtre du Nord / Théâtre national Lille Tourcoing Région Pas-de-Calais, La Foudre / Scène nationale de Petit-Quevilly, Scène nationale de Sénart, Le Grand T / Scène conventionnée Loire Atlantique de Nantes, Arts 276/ Automne en Normandie.


Directed by the playwright. Set design and Lighting: Eric Soyer. Costumes and animals: Isabelle Deffin. Sound: François Leymarie et Grégoire Leymarie.
Cast: Jacob Ahrend, Saadia Bentaïeb, Lionel Codino, Ruth Olaizola, Frédéric Laurent, Serge Larivière, Marie Piemontese, Nathalie Rjewsky, Dominique Tack.

Characters : 4 women - 5 men -
Actes Sud-Papiers

Act 1
I really liked working with her
She always saw the bigger picture
She started out in the store as a check-out assistant, then she became multi-purpose
In other words, she could be asked to do anything
She had this theory she used to say in life things aren’t set in stone
A situation that doesn’t work for you can always be transformed

I remember
She was the only person around me who was interested in the bigger questions in life,
The cosmos for instance and the stars in the sky, all the way down to the tiniest…

She used to say
I really wonder
Where all these products end up
That we sell here in the store all day long,
And that people buy, swallow and evacuate
It’s one of those things in life
That you don’t see happening
As invisible as the the most distant stars in the sky