Lou Gargouri

I am a joint PhD candidate in Romance Languages and Literatures and Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago, specializing in contemporary women’s seul·e en scène (solo performance) in France, particularly autobiographical and testimonial theater. I am also a playwright, performer, and stand-up comedian.

My dissertation, Alone, Together: Dramaturgies of Women’s Solo Performance in Contemporary France, examines the dramaturgical possibilities of a single body occupying the stage. I investigate how performers negotiate narration and embodiment, and what a performing body owes the story it carries for someone else.

Central to this inquiry is how the passage of testimony between bodies changes its authority and reception. I argue that autobiographical performance also unsettles the apparent correspondence between the performer and the subject of her account when different versions of a self coexist across time. These questions inform my study of the variations of monologue and the boundaries of the seul·e en scène, including its intersections with stand-up comedy. I ask how a monologue extending across an entire performance structures the spectator’s relationship to the speaker.

The dissertation also considers how artistic choices are shaped by the conditions under which solos are produced and recognized. My research into Festival OFF d’Avignon programs traces the form’s changing place within theatrical classifications. Interviews and a survey of women practitioners extend this inquiry to artists’ own definitions of the form and their experiences of creating work, particularly where creative autonomy meets financial constraint. I approach their accounts as contributions to the theory of solo performance, including where they complicate my readings or reveal collaborative practices that leave little trace in published texts and recordings.

Performance practice as research (recherche-création) is central to my methodology. My scholarship informs my creative work, while rehearsal and performance generate questions that I bring back to my research and conversations with artists. In To a Future Self, I used live performance and digital media to stage a character at different moments of her life. Working with my own body as an archive allowed me to explore how migration and memory shape the relationship between these temporal selves, and to experiment with the audience’s place in their exchanges. Developing the production also gave me a concrete understanding of the artistic collaboration and institutional support a solo requires.

This exchange between research and artistic practice has developed through my immersion in different theatrical and cultural environments. My training at El Teatro in Tunis, Cours Florent in Paris, and The Second City in Chicago, alongside my experience in New York’s creative communities, including performing with the Sugar Mouse women’s collective, has shaped my interdisciplinary approach and my attention to how cultural assumptions change across places. My stand-up draws on these shifts, approaching questions of privilege through the body and the experience of displacement. Drawing on contrasts between the cultures I have lived in, I explore how the same person can be perceived differently or occupy a different position of privilege from one setting to another. My broader research interests include feminist and documentary theater, theater of the absurd, theatrical responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, and ecological theater.

Selected Publications and Interviews

• “Tisser l’intime et le collectif : Scénographie et transformation sociale dans Elle était une fois… LA jupe ! de Mohamed Amin Boudrika.” Interview with Mohamed Amin Boudrika. Francosphères, 2025. Read interview.
• “Quels rôles pour le spectateur à l’ère numérique ?” Review of the volume by Izabella Pluta and Julie Sermon. Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, no. 31, June 2025. Read review.
• “Le théâtre doit toujours se questionner, c’est la condition essentielle à son renouvellement.” Interview with Essia Jaïbi. Africultures, December 14, 2024. Read interview.
• “L’écriture théâtrale est un art artisanal.” Interview with Penda Diouf. Africultures, September 22, 2024. Read interview.

Work in Progress

• “Cartographier le seul·e en scène féminin : enquête sur les pratiques et enjeux d’un genre théâtral émergent en France (2015–2025).” Essays in French Literature and Culture, no. 64, special issue “En scène ! Regards sur le théâtre français et francophone contemporain.” Proposal accepted; article in preparation.
• “Tricoter au féminin : Transmission intergénérationnelle et résistance dans Gardiennes de Fanny Cabon.” Submitted to Femmes et tissage : (ré)appropriations littéraires et artistiques du XIXe siècle à nos jours, ENS Lyon.
• “Métamorphose #2 : Seul en Scène Tunisien ou les Échos de l’Identité Mouvante de Jalila Baccar.” Article in preparation for LiCArC.