A former actress attempts to change careers later in life by creating embroidered handicrafts and decides to do a performance to attract more people. We immediately understand the autofiction behind this new production from Valérie Véril. Under the tent of her stand, in the middle of a small handicraft market, the actress and director uses the tapestry that she creates live to explore a series of overlapping themes, such as artistic creation, the relationship with work, aging, malaise and existential angst. In this staged cross-stitch performance of life as it goes, fragmentary words are released in a “flow of consciousness”, calmed by the hypnotic movements of the needle. Considerations, qualms, realisations and shameless confessions follow one after the other with the perfect level of self-depreciation in view of the intimacy shared in public space.

However, Valérie Véril also raises questions about the links between consumerism and art, the value of craftsmanship and art professions, and the return to the joy of DIY as a connection with our ancestral values. Without realising it, and as if by magic, under the cross-stitch needles and in the midst of the “embroidered works”, while continuing to play off the rules of live performance, a whole world of reflection and intimacy takes shape in this tapestry infused with quirkiness and humour, or Canevas.