Holden

Le Café Vainqueur is a company in which Marilyn Leray works both as a director and an actress. She approaches the stage by adapting novels and literary texts. The notion of challenge often comes up in her choice of texts, but it is above all the writing itself that interests her: bringing writing to the stage and working with it, so that it becomes oral and concrete. Her favourite themes are the notion of individual freedom versus the power of the group, and therefore of norms and conformity.

After spending a year at the Regional Conservatory of Dramatic Arts and then training at the Studio-Théâtre in Nantes, Marilyn Leray began her acting career in 1990. She has worked with several directors, including Christophe Rouxel, Gilles Blaise, and Johan Dehollander. From the start of her career, she has remained faithful to Yvon Lapous, director and actor at Théâtre du Loup, for whom she has performed in the majority of his productions, and whom she occasionally assists with directing (notably in Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, The Missing Child by Jens Smærup Sørensen, Alice's Journey in Switzerland by Lukas Bärfuss, and Impossible Encounters by Peter Asmussen).
From 2000 to 2007, Marilyn Leray taught drama at the Regional Conservatory of Dramatic Arts in Nantes. There, she developed a growing interest in directing, and deepened her thinking around creation and interpretation. In 2003, she met Marc Tsypkine de Kerblay, a video artist trained at the Nantes School of Fine Arts, with whom she began a creative collaboration and founded the company LTK Production.
In 2005, they adapted Cooking with Elvis by Lee Hall for the Nouveau Théâtre d'Angers, presenting a bilingual English-French production. This collaboration continued with several productions: A Boat for Dolls by Milena Markovic (2011), The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents by Lukas Bärfuss (2014), and an adaptation titled Saint Sauveur sur le sang versé, based on Category 3.1 by Lars Norén (2012).
In 2012, Marilyn Leray discovered the novel Zone by Mathias Enard. Supported in her research project by Le Grand R, the national stage of La Roche-sur-Yon, the adaptation took shape over five years of intermittent residencies. The piece premiered at the national stage in Blois in late February 2017. Since then, the question of adaptation has become central to Marilyn’s work: how to bring narrative to the stage, how to treat it, how to explore narration and the formal choices that arise from the writing and the selected text.
The notion of challenge often guides her choices, but what interests her above all is the writing itself — bringing the writing to the stage and working it until it becomes oral and tangible.

From 2014 to 2019, Marilyn was an associate artist at La Halle aux Grains, the national stage of Blois, and she founded her own company: Le Café Vainqueur.
In 2018, she directed Avril, a young audience play by Sophie Merceron, which went on to win the Grand Prize for Youth Dramatic Literature in 2020. She also discovered Jack London’s novel Martin Eden, which she adapted and performed for the first time in November 2021 at the national stage in Saint-Nazaire.
For her most recent creation, HOLDEN, she commissioned a new text from Nantes-based author Guillaume Lavenant, using J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye as a reference point.

Finalist for the Prix Médicis in 2019 with his debut novel Protocole gouvernante, Guillaume Lavenant is a novelist, playwright, and director.
In 2008, he co-founded the Nantes-based writers’ collective Extra Muros, for which he wrote or co-wrote several theatrical projects and hybrid forms blending theatre and performance.
In 2019, he created the company Théâtre des Faux Revenants to bring his second original play, Winter is Coming, to the stage.
In 2021, he wrote the libretto for the opera Les Sauvages, produced by Angers-Nantes Opéra and performed with young people from neighborhoods across Nantes.
Alongside his writing, he continues to work as a dramaturge, director, and assistant director with regional companies, and he leads literary writing workshops.

After studying for a year at the conservatory in Paris’s 19th arrondissement under Émilie Anna Maillet, Mégane Ferrat was accepted into the CNSAD (French National Academy of Dramatic Arts), where she had several pivotal encounters — including with Ariane Mnouchkine during a school-organized trip to India, and Xavier Gallais, with whom she performed her first play after graduating. She also forged strong connections with some of her classmates, with whom she continues to collaborate today.

She has performed under the direction of Sylvain Levitte (Twelfth Night), Louise Legendre and May Hilaire (The Color of Justice), and in 2022 she took part in the 6th edition of La Grande Hâte, an open-air theatre festival that she co-organizes with her company, La Mutinerie.

by Guillaume Lavenant

Concept and direction Marilyn Leray

With Mégane Ferrat

Original music Rachel Langlais

Lighting design Sara Lebreton

Costume design Caroline Leray

Set design Valérie Jung

Sound Jérôme Teurtrie

Technical management Pierre-Yves Chouin, Christian Cuomo

PRODUCTION

Le Café Vainqueur

COPRODUCTIONS

Le Canal – Théâtre du Pays de Redon, national stage with a focus on theatre creation, in collaboration with the Lycée Saint-Sauveur

⸱ La Minoterie – Creation hub for young audiences and artistic education in Dijon

⸱ ONYX – Théâtre de Saint-Herblain

⸱ City of Saint-Herblain

SUPPORT

City of Paris (touring support)

⸱ La Chapelle Dérézo – Artistic experimentation space in Brest

⸱ La Chartreuse – National Center for Dramatic Writing, Villeneuve-lèz-Avignon

⸱ L’arc – National stage, Le Creusot

⸱ L’Amin Théâtre – Le TAG