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Charles Chemin - Mary Said What She Said

The arrival in Adelaide of French acting legend Isabelle Huppert’s solo performance as Mary, Queen of Scots in American visionary Robert Wilson’s production of Mary Said What She Said is a major event. Touring intermittently since 2019, Wilson’s production taps into the doomed Scottish monarch’s inner world via a remarkable fusion of word, image, movement and music.

 

“The feeling is comparable to being in Mary's head in the moments before she was beheaded,” explains Charles Chemin, the show’s dramaturg, co-director, and long-term collaborator of Wilson. “ One can witness a whirlpool of thoughts and memories in a very direct and immediate way. The experience is then focused on the intensity of the emotions, rather than on their theatricality. It allows a freedom to Isabelle to also act as herself, while being traversed by the poetics, a process that Wilson was particularly fond of, maybe with Isabelle even more than with other actors.”

 

Mary’s three Adelaide dates continues a collaboration between Wilson, Huppert and writer Darryl Pinckney that began in 1991with Wilson’s production of Orlando. Chemin has been with Mary since the start, and while Wilson’s death in 2025 leaves a huge hole in world theatre culture, his work lives on.

 

“When the piece ends, I always feel like my neighbours have kept their breath for an hour and a half,” Chemin says. “The chemistry between Wilson's magic and Huppert's magnetic presence is at an all time peak. I would not trade working on this piece for any other.” 

 

Mary Said What She Said, Festival Theatre, 6-8 March


The List Adelaide Guide, March 2026

 

ends

 

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