L’autre royaume

"By being born, we acquire dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in that of the sick. Although we would all prefer to present the good passport, the day comes when each of us is obliged, if only for a short time, to identify ourselves as citizens of the other kingdom."

- Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor

It is the story of a young couple facing illness.

She directs Puccini. He mixes in clubs at night. They have two young children and life hits them in the face. Sick. Both of them. Each in turn. Caregiver, cared for. Taking turns. Two cancers in their thirties.

The show will be the kaleidoscope of those years and of that dive into the other kingdom. It will blend children's drawings and doctors' words, bursts of laughter and shattered bodies, tunes of La Bohème, modular synthesizer, and contemporary dance.

It is inspired by my personal story. Those two illnesses, we lived through them with my partner, and with the passing years, I realized that these experiences had become an expertise. And that it was urgent to tell of that dive.

In the other kingdom, there are thousands of us. Sometimes, it shows that we have crossed the border. And sometimes not. We live among you, we dance with death, we undergo treatments and operations with fear in our gut and shame on our brow. We work, we get up in the morning when our body allows it, we take our children to school, we watch them sing in the choir, and we think.

Will my scan be good? Do I ask the radiologist for the result or do I wait for the appointment with the oncologist? Do I put on a wig or a cap? Can I host an afternoon snack for my son's 5th birthday if I have no hair? Do I rebuild my body from before or do I embrace being an amazon at forty? Do I say the word cancer to my daughter? And to my boss?

These questions, we only share them with those who have the same passport. The others, we reassure them. The others, they cannot understand.

Time has passed. Both in remission. Life saved. But it changed us so much that we do not even know who we were before it happened to us. Time has passed, over the years, I understood that we were not the only ones, we were the first.

The newcomers to this dark kingdom know that we know it well, many call us when they cross the border.

Everyone feels alone while there are so many of us. There is so much silence and shame. Nearly four million people live with cancer in France today. And in our generation, cases are exploding. It is time for anger to come out and for shame to change sides, for cancer to be politicized, and for the destruction of our bodies to stop.

It is not just the story of a couple facing illness, it is the story of a generation facing an epidemic. And its awakening.

- Pauline Bureau, January 2026