Lausanne Writer Brings His Grandmother's Portrait to the Stage at Vidy

Adrien Rupp, a Lausanne-based writer and actor, is bringing his book "La Simone" to the stage at Théâtre de Vidy, according to Le Temps. The adaptation opens six months after the book's publication by Editions La Veilleuse, and all five scheduled performances have already sold out.

"La Simone" is a portrait of Rupp's paternal grandmother, a woman he describes through small, tender details: her habit of dressing up in her handmade evening dress and best shoes for a rare outing to the theatre, and her wonder at watching professional artists perform. Le Temps reports that the book has become, in the paper's words, a gesture of collective memory in which learning to lose teaches us how to live.

Rupp, born in 1979, discovered a taste for storytelling in school and later trained in theatre, joining the first cohort of students at La Manufacture, the Lausanne theatre school, in 2004. He recalls that period as one of experimentation, a laboratory atmosphere open to trying anything.

Le Temps notes that the stage production was created under difficult circumstances, though the article does not specify what those circumstances were.