IN FOCUS

Pascal arrived in Beijing the day before.

I see him again. As always, he is full of energy despite the jet lag. You can hear him before you even see him. His voice reaches the rehearsal room from the lift before he has even stepped out.

On the third floor of our theatre, the actors are waiting for him.

We are about to begin rehearsals for the company's new production, Dans la tempête continue, a play Pascal has written especially for us. There is a mixture of excitement and nervousness in the air.

Exactly one year has passed since 7 June 2025, the last day of a workshop I invited Pascal to lead for a group of actors.

During that year, Pascal wrote Dans la tempête continue for the actors he had selected at the workshop, and I translated the play into Chinese. Over the past few months, we have met several times on video calls to read the play together: we were in Beijing, while Pascal was somewhere else in the world each time — Shanghai, Paris, Avignon, Atrani, Florence, Imperia, Mexico City, Houston…

Today, we welcome him back like a migratory bird returning.

Migratory birds fly south in winter to find food and escape the cold, then return north when conditions become favourable again. It is an instinct for survival, a wisdom inscribed in their genes over millions of years.

I often think of Pascal as a migratory bird because, from Beijing, where I live and work, I see him constantly flying from one part of the world to another. As though he, too, needs to go where it is warm. Where there is warmth, where there is desire: the desire to make theatre, to speak about love and life through theatre, and to do all of this with others, together.

Speaking of this desire to work together, Pascal once wrote something that stayed with me in his preface to the Chinese edition of Le Début de l'A:

“This is how projects are born: out of the fear of losing one another. A childlike fear of being abandoned in the forest of solitude.”

And so, following that same desire, we find ourselves together again for Dans la tempête continue.

It is 8 June 2026.

Our first day of rehearsals.

On my way home after that first day, a few memories came back to me.

I thought of our walks up Jingshan Hill, looking out over the Forbidden City, during Clôture de l'amour. I remembered wandering through the narrow streets of Dali's old town while creating Le Début de l'A. And I thought of that impromptu dinner in a small sushi restaurant in Taipei after a rehearsal of Ghosts.

I remembered those relaxed conversations, those casual talks.

About our work, our friends, our loves, our families, our lives.

They always came after an intense day of rehearsals, when all our energy, our bodies and our emotions had been given over to the work.

Memories like these sometimes return and accompany me as I continue working.

That evening, an idea suddenly came to me.

The next morning, I sent Pascal a message:

“Would you be interested in having a series of conversations together, starting from the rehearsals of Dans la tempête continue, to explore and record the process of creating the piece?”

He replied almost immediately:

“A thousand times yes. But the best moment for me is fifteen minutes just after rehearsal. Because everything is still fresh and alive.”

And that is how 15 Minutes After Rehearsal was born.

This book will bring together a series of conversations between Pascal and me, beginning on the first day of rehearsals, 8 June 2026, and continuing throughout the creation process.

Each conversation takes place immediately after rehearsal.

That moment when the actors say goodbye to one another on stage; the stage managers put away the props and write up their notes; the technicians make their final adjustments; and we sit in the back rows of the auditorium and begin talking about the rehearsal that has just ended.

Above all, I want to offer this book, still taking shape, to everyone who loves theatre.

When I was studying theatre in Paris, I was immensely curious about the people who actually made theatre.

Going to see performances was an almost daily desire, a necessity.

I also loved reading interviews with directors, playwrights and actors whose worlds intrigued me: how they looked at other human beings, how they listened to the sounds of the world, how they questioned the times they lived in.

Often, these readings taught me as much as the classes themselves.

They brought me closer not only to the works, but also to the ways in which those works were imagined, thought through and brought into being.

I remember another desire I had back then.

I wanted to be inside the rehearsal room.

To be close to the people creating the work.

To watch actors rehearsing.

To listen to directors and actors discussing a scene.

To hear playwrights talk about their writing.

To see what happens before a performance comes into existence.

Such opportunities are rare.

Yet for anyone who truly wants to understand what theatre is, they can be an extraordinarily valuable experience.

And so, this book is also for all those who, like me once, wished they could get a little closer to theatre.

It is both a record of a creative process and an ongoing conversation between Pascal and me about the theatre we love.

A theatre that keeps us alive.

A theatre that keeps us moving.