Event details

This work-in-progress one-woman piece is a collaboration between renowned French playwright Pascal Rambert and actress Pauline Chalamet. The play follows a young woman with a master’s degree who is—temporarily—a window cleaner. Over the course of the performance, she expresses her anger at social stratification and grapples with loneliness in a world divided between “people who succeed and people who are nothing.”

Losing Your Bag comes to Princeton before making its English-language premiere at L’Alliance New York’s Crossing the Line Festival in November. Rambert, who was a Visiting Belknap Fellow in the Council of the Humanities and Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University, returns to Seuls en Scène for the eighth time this year.

“A gritty text in which a window cleaner settles her scores with capitalist society.”
—Le Monde

Presented in collaboration with L’Alliance New York’s 19th edition of Crossing the Line Festival.

Tickets

Free and open to the public; advance tickets required. Tickets available in late August through University Ticketing.

Performance Details

Show performed in English. Duration: 40 min. Content appropriate for ages 15+

See all shows in 2026 French Theater Festival

Directions

Get directions to Blair Arch on the Princeton University campus.

Accessibility

Guests in need of access accommodations are invited to contact the Lewis Center at 609-258-5262 or email LewisCenter@princeton.edu at least one week in advance of the event date.

About the Artists

Pascal Rambert

Photo courtesy of Pascal Rambert

Pascal Rambert is French writer, choreographer and director for the stage and screen. In 2016, he received the Theater Prize from the Académie Française for his entire body of work. Among the affiliated institutions he worked closely with Paris Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord and the National Theater of Strasbourg. In 2026 he was made a Knight of the legion of honor.

Rambert’s theatre plays and choreographies have been produced by structure, supported by the French Ministry of Culture and Communication, and staged in Europe, North America, Asia, Russia, South America and theMiddle East.

His writings (theatre, stories and poetry) are published in France and translated, published and staged in over 20 languages around the world. His dance pieces, including Memento Mori (2013) created with lighting designer Yves Godin, have been performed at major festivals and contemporary dance festivals in Europe as well as New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles.

One of Rambert’s career highlights is Clôture de l’amour (Love’s End) (2011) for which the script won the prize for public theater in the Theater 2013 – Dithea competition, the prize for best new French-language play from the Syndicat de la Critique (Critics’ Union) in 2012, and the Grand Prize for dramatic literature from the Centre national du théâtre (National Theater Center) in October, 2012. In 2017, Clôture de l’amour was staged over 180 times in France and much more all over the world and was translated in 23 languages. Another notable play is Répétition (Rehearsal) (2014), presented as part of the Festival d’Automne in Paris, which won Rambert the 2015 annual prize for literature and philosophy at the Académie Française.

Other acclaimed works in the past decade include Avignon à vie (Avignon for Life), De mes propres mains (With My Own Hands), Argument, Une vie (A Life), Actrice (Actress), Reconstitution, Nos Parents (Our Parents) and Christine.

In 2019, Soeurs (Sisters) premiered in France, followed closely by the Spanish version, Hermanas. In the same year, Rambert was Visiting Belknap Fellow in the Humanities and Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University.

In 2019 he was a Belknap Longterm Fellow at Princeton University for 3 months.

In 2022, he created his new play Sowane written for Egyptian actresses and actors during the D-CAF Festival in Cairo, Egypt, and adapted his play Finlandia created in Madrid in 2022 for Israel Elejalde and Irene Escolar into a French version with Victoria Quesnel and Joseph Drouet at The Bouffes du Nord Theater in Paris (FR).

In 2025 he created the Mexican version of Ranger, and the first part of his French trilogy Les conséquences at the TNB in Rennes, which was on tour in Paris at the Théâtre de la Ville as part of the Festival d’Automne in Paris, Annecy and Nice. He recreated Soeurs with Audrey Bonnet and Victoria Quesnel in 2026.

Pauline Chalamet

Photo courtesy Pauline Chalamet

Pauline Hope Chalamet is an American and French actress. She made her feature film debut in Judd Apatow’s comedy The King of Staten Island (2020). From 2021 to 2025, she starred in the HBO Max comedy series The Sex Lives of College Girls.

Chalamet is a co-founder of the production company Gummy Films, set up in 2019. Through the company, she has co-produced and starred in the dark comedy film What Doesn’t Float (2023).

Production Credits

Text, conception, light, direction: Pascal Rambert
Starring Pauline Chalamet
Production: structure production

Special Thanks

Pascal Rambert, Pauline Roussille, Pauline Chalamet, Tatyana Franck, Violaine Huisman and Clémentine Guinchtat.