Caroline Guiela Nguyen's 'Lacrima' weaves haute couture, monarchy, and personal drama at Milan's Strehler

French director Caroline Guiela Nguyen, of Vietnamese-Indian-Algerian descent, director of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg and associate artist of Milan's Piccolo Teatro, staged her latest work 'Lacrima' at the Teatro Strehler in Milan. The play centers on a fictional 2025 wedding dress for the Princess of England, involving a daring designer, a prestigious Parisian fashion house, a veil from the Victoria and Albert Museum needing restoration, lacemakers from Alençon, and embroiderers from Mumbai. The narrative shifts between Paris, Alençon, Mumbai, London, and Australia, intertwining the dress's creation with personal stories: the fashion house director's domestic violence, a lacemaker's sister's illness, and an Indian embroiderer's blindness from overwork. The three-hour, no-interval performance uses a single set divided fluidly into multiple locations, with a screen projecting close-ups and subtitles in Tamil and LIS (French Sign Language), reflecting the historical deafness of Alençon lacemakers. Nguyen employs a cinematic split-screen technique for video calls and real-time camera feeds, creating a circular, tightly paced structure akin to a TV series. Themes include international politics, haute couture exploitation, court protocol rigidity, domestic violence, and labor exploitation, ultimately probing intimate human emotions behind the 'tears' hidden in the wedding dress's folds. The play runs at the Strehler in Milan.