June 7, 2025
Culture

Lylybeth Merle offers you a performance of a new kind in Avignon

By Benjamin PLASTRIA / July 17, 2022

Lilith(s) is the name of this theatrical UFO presented at the Doms theater as part of the Avignon off festival.

It takes courage and willpower to stand in front of an audience to talk about gender and identity.

Ket magazine was on hand to experience this special moment.

This production is somewhere between theatre and social documentary, an intimate and poetic notebook and a DragQueer cabaret number. It’s currently presented in a 30-minute form, but will see a long-form version presented in Brussels theatres in 2023.

“I am a trans and non-binary person and for 28 years I was socially perceived as a boy…” explains the performer. “At the base of my gender deconstruction is my discovery of drag art, allowing me for the first time to overturning the codes and questioning them. From this meeting was born my DragQueer character, Dame Lylybeth, a storyteller of sensitive and poetic stories, a bit clownish.”

In the production, Lylybeth shares her story with an open heart.

On stage, at her side, we find Baxter. Baxter is a sound designer and performer but also the voices of the women of Lylybeth’s family – her Mother, her Aunt and her Grandmother – those who have been her models and to whom she connects today in a new way.

“This free speech, on my adventures and misadventures, gave birth to something in my family that I did not expect: Sisterhood…” explains Lylybeth. “The women around me understood me and began to confide in me, to advise me, to hold my hand when I was afraid. Following a series of interviews with them, it is today with their voices, their memories and their paths that I come on stage by creating bridges between our stories to create a family and sore tale”.

At the end of the performance, Lylybeth invites discussion about identity and being trans.

It’s an intimate moment between performer and audience – a moment of freshness within the stifling heat of Avignon.

Find out more

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