Pour son bien

While Camille had barricaded herself in her home and was living in extremely precarious conditions, her mother and brother had her committed to a psychiatric hospital, forbidding her—with the institution’s complicity—from sending or receiving letters. Ruth Olaizola writes a documentary poem based on Camille Claudel’s censored correspondence, archival materials, and her medical records. Accompanied on stage by Saadia Bentaïeb—an actress who, like Ruth Olaizola, has worked with Joël Pommerat—and musician Gwennaëlle Roulleau, she takes us on a kaleidoscopic journey, an investigation into the artist’s past and a history riddled with gaps. In a constant interplay between concrete and dreamlike situations, the boundaries between madness and reality blur. Archival documents come to life, and we find ourselves caught in a frenzied spiral. Co-produced by the TDB, where the show premiered, Pour son bien goes beyond a personal story to examine psychiatric institutions and madness in the early 20th century, the status of women and their place in society, parentage, and family secrets.