Marion Siéfert’s THE BIG SLEEP to Have New York Premiere at Crossing the Line Festival

L’Alliance New York will present the New York premiere of The Big Sleep (Le Grand Sommeil) as part of the 2025 Crossing the Line Festival on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, at 7:30 p.m. The performance will take place at Le Skyroom, L’Alliance New York, 22 East 60th Street, 8th Floor, New York, NY, in collaboration with the 14th edition of Seuls en Scène, Princeton French Theater Festival. Tickets start at $15.

Returning to L’Alliance after her acclaimed jeanne_dark_ at the 2022 Crossing the Line Festival, writer, director, and performer Marion Siéfert brings another fierce theatrical work. Collaborating with actress and dancer Helena de Laurens, Siéfert transforms the stage into an exploration of adolescence and womanhood, challenging de Laurens to embody the contradictions, fears, and triumphs of teenage girlhood.

Performers

Marion Siéfert is a writer, director, and performer whose work spans theatre, film, and writing. She developed her first piece, 2 or 3 Things I Know About You, in Germany during her doctoral research, and has since collaborated on Nocturnes and L’Époque, two films by Matthieu Bareyre, who also works as artistic collaborator on her stage productions. Together they now co-write her shows as well as a forthcoming feature film. From 2017 to 2023 she was an associate artist at La Commune, Centre Dramatique National in Aubervilliers. In 2018 she created The Big Sleep (Le Grand Sommeil) in collaboration with choreographer and performer Helena de Laurens, presented at the Festival d’Automne in Paris. She went on to premiere DU SALE! in 2019, which was awarded the Grand Jury Prize at the Fast Forward European Festival, and jeanne_dark_ in 2020, the first show conceived simultaneously for the stage and Instagram, which received the Digital Prize from the French Critics’ Syndicate for Theatre, Music and Dance. Most recently, she co-wrote Daddy with Bareyre, which premiered at the CNDC in Angers and at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. Since 2024 she has been an associate artist at T2G – Centre Dramatique National de Gennevilliers and Points Communs – Scène Nationale de Cergy-Pontoise.

Helena de Laurens is an artist, actress, and dancer born in Paris in 1988. Her work explores the grotesque, the grimace, and metamorphosis. She wrote a thesis on Valeska Gert as part of her studies at EHESS and has performed in nightclubs, museums, gardens, and bookshops. She regularly collaborates with artists including Esmé Planchon, Clara Pacotte, and Sophie Bonnet-Pourpet. As a performer and choreographer, she has worked in two solos written and directed by Marion Siéfert, Le Grand Sommeil in 2018 and jeanne_dark_ in 2020, and in 2022 starred alongside Emmanuelle Lafon and Frédéric Leidgens in Copi’s L’Homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer, directed by Thibaud Croisy.

Creative Team

The production is conceived, directed, and written by Marion Siéfert, with choreography by both Siéfert and Helena de Laurens. De Laurens also serves as artistic collaborator and performer. Marine Brosse provides set design and serves as assistant director, while lighting design is created by Marie-Sol Kim and Juliette Romens. Sound design is by Johannes Van Bebber, costume design is by Valentine Solé, and Anne Pollock serves as production manager for Ziferte Productions.

Production Credits