Pasqualina claims to have gaps in her memory, yet she recalls with precision many of the key moments before her life was upended. She speaks, and the past returns in flashbacks, as she waits for a husband who would allow her to leave her father's home and devote herself to the man who will have chosen her.

Pasqualina is Calabrian, like Saverio La Ruina, the author of this monologue written in 2006. He brings to life the tension between the aspirations and the prohibitions that shape a young woman's existence in a remote region steeped in tradition, honour and family. Her fate, caught in the grip of a patriarchal society, resonates today — there and here alike.

On discovering the monologue, Françoise Gillard immediately thought of Anna Cervinka to perform it, recognising in her acting a rare combination of humour and freshness, gravity and restraint that the piece demands. Herself returning this season to L'Événement by Annie Ernaux, Françoise Gillard values the intimacy of the solo form — an ideal vehicle for words that resist any attempt to subjugate the female body. As Anna Cervinka observes, the piece's impact is all the more powerful for the fact that the episodes of the young woman's life are told entirely from her own point of view, with a candour and spontaneity that are quite singular, despite the violence she has endured.