Gaëlle Axelbrun is an author, director, set designer, as well as a draftswoman and performer, based in Strasbourg. She leads the company Sorry Mom. She studied Art History and Visual Arts in Paris, and went on to train in set design at the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR), graduating in June 2022 with honours.
During her studies, she interned with technical teams and as an assistant to various stage directors. Between 2022 and 2024, she worked with the Collectif Ça gronde, which she co-founded during her studies at HEAR.
In 2021 her first play, Loin de la boue où l’on s’endort, got noticed by the National Theatre of Strasburg’s Reading Committee. It was presented as a staged reading by the students of the University of Paris-Nanterre Master’s program in Directing and Dramaturgy, at Théâtre Ouvert (Paris) in February 2023 and performed at La Mousson d’été Festival 2024 as a staged reading directed by Carole Thibaut, Artistic Director of the National Drama Centre of Montluçon / Théâtre des Îlets. In June 2022, she presented her first production: Nos Ruines, which she wrote, directed and for which she did the set design, at La Pokop (Strasburg). In January 2025, the text will be developed during a residency at the Tréteaux de France / National Drama Centre, with the ERACM Acting School students and in partnership with the collective A Mots Découverts. In December 2022, she founded the company Sorry Mom and began working on Requin Velours (premiere in October 2024 at TAPS Strasbourg). The texte gained recognition through the reading committee A Mots Découverts and earned a distinction at La Voix du Bivouac at La Chartreuse (Villeneuve-lez-Avignon) in July 2023 as well as Artcena’s Encouragements (May 2024).
In April 2023, her poetry book J’ai sous-titré mon enfance pour faire du drame en sépia was selected by Strasburgese Citizen’s Reading Committee J’aimerais vous Lire, which led to it being co-published in September 2024. In May-June 2024, she did a residency at La Chartreuse where she began writing her new text: Motherlode (provisional title). That solo piece will tackle the topics of sex work, material needs, as well as the digital world and the presence of a merry-go-round’s horse. Her work revolves around intimacy, family stories, around the quality and healthiness of a home, but also mental illness, body and sexuality.
Loin de la boue où l’on s’endort
Loin de la boue où l’on s’endort is the wish and confession of three voices: those of Anna, Corto, and Paula, three children who have grown up too quickly. These siblings attempt to recount, both together and individually, their childhood: its emotions, fantasies, sounds, and images, but also its voids, monsters, and dangers. How can they align to try to express it? This play also explores the concept of memory and recollection—how it is reconstructed and its relationship with truth. If a child’s cries melt away on the tongue, how can one recount, reweave the shocks, the gaps, the traumas? What stance should one take? In the face of disintegration, the plurality of voices becomes both a refuge and a source of vertigo.
