Avignon 2026: “Pépée, An Endless Story” – Josépha Sini speaks about her mother

Avignon – 10.07.2026: Amid the bustle of Avignon’s Festival Off, Belgian actress Josépha Sini presents the one-woman show “Pépée, une histoire sans chute” – a text developed together with Laurène Hurst, which she brings to the stage with a sharp eye, dry humor, and controlled tenderness. On a small stage, the figure of the mother creates an entire world: lawyer and authority, shadow and accomplice, always close yet difficult to approach.

Sini graduated from the Conservatoire Royal de Liège in 2022, and in her monologue she deconstructs family codes without embellishment. The language is concise and sharp, sometimes rough, yet warmth always emerges behind the irony. The work is not a reckoning drama, but a tentative approach: episodes from childhood, the kitchen, and the law office are woven together in a way that explores the roles parents and children assign to one another—and the small rituals that confirm or break those roles.

The strength of the evening lies in the actress’s precision. Sini uses pauses, cuts out fragments of scenes, and lets them flow again without slipping into pathos. “Pépée” appears as a radiant counterpart while remaining a person, marked by subtle differences rather than assertions. Everyday courtroom scenes collide with small ordinary landscapes, the mundane rubs against the sublime, and seriousness repeatedly tilts into comedy. Laughter and silence alternate—a sure sign that what is being told touches a horizon of shared experience.

The directing and text work with Laurène Hurst creates a clear line. The stage design is deliberately kept narrow, and the lighting changes have subtle nuances; this allows language to move to the center. This economy of means fits well with the festival’s Off context, which runs from July 4 to 25 and often brings together works that create a far greater presence with little equipment. “Pépée” establishes itself there as a quiet discovery: an evening that brings wit and depth together in a confined space without trading one for the other.

When the audience leaves the theater, what they take with them is more of an echo than a clever ending: a personal story that touches on universal questions such as belonging, the inheritance of parental expectations, and the challenge of finding one’s own voice within the chorus of family transmission. Sini does not definitively define her character; she lets her move. This is precisely where the monologue gains its strength: in its refusal to offer a final explanation and in the delicacy with which it endures intimacy. “Pépée” remains memorable because it takes the complexity of the private seriously—with a light step, but without evasion.