“Writing my story, I managed to break away from it”: Nicolas Petisoff delivers himself on the tables of the Tarn

But how to become one when building on secrets? What’s your place in the world when you don’t know your story? With “Parpaing” the actor talks about himself, but also about others. Trace the path of resilience that everyone takes to truly become themselves.
During his tour along the Tarn from 12 to 17 November, we met Nicolas Petisoff.

“Parpaing” is the story of your life. What was the genesis of this show?

I learned at the age of 10 that I had been adopted during a conversation in the village. Throughout my life, the question of origins has followed me without ever having real answers. And then one day, in 2017, Alain, my biological mother’s husband, contacted me. New truths came to push the old ones and I was finally able to fill all the holes in my story. This is where I started writing. It was so liberating to be able to put a visceral truth into my story that is something I wanted to offer to others.

For a first writing you have chosen a dangerous exercise: telling the intimate to talk about a universal topic.

Intimacy is a great way to talk about others. While writing this story I talked to the people around me and it seemed to me that we all had a common background. Finally, in writing my story, I managed to break away from it. It no longer belongs to me: it has become a work tool. I would even dream of seeing him played by someone else.

Was it obvious to choose theater as a space for dialogue?

I have always been immersed in the theater, as an actor or director. And I’ve always had this desire to write about origins, about the way you present yourself to the world when you don’t know where you come from. The day my biological family came into my life, I wrote the text overnight. As if a door were opened and this intimacy that I found boring to tell finally took on its full meaning to be shared. The theater is a live show, so yes, it was obvious to choose it to speak.

“Parpaing” is the first part of a triptych in which you talk about “your monsters”, as you say. Is each part a step in this search for oneself?

This trilogy is actually three questions that have kept me awake for a long time. “Parpaing” is aimed at who I am, at my origins. In the second part I talk about how I love and how I learned to say it.
Finally, the last will be a show about anger: how can you manage not to be in this world?