“I won’t undo anything, won’t slip back into my old skin,” writes Constance Debré in her celebrated essay Love Me Tender. But how do you reinvent yourself? And how can you leave your old life behind? Debré traces the journey of a woman who untangles herself from her former existence in pursuit of radical freedom. Along the way, she collides with societal boundaries and scratches at narratives reserved for men. She has abandoned and walked away from that which seemed stable in her life: her career as a lawyer, her husband, her home, the comfort of her bourgeois existence. She begins a new life as a writer. She falls in love with women. And for this, she is punished—by losing custody of her child.

In Marie Rosa Tietjen, Zino Wey and Laura Landergott’s stage version of the text, it is a search for clues and an exploration journey. Real freedom perhaps only exists in resistance to social norms.

Text: Love Me Tender by Constance Debré. Matthes & Seitz Berlin, 2024.