The Transgender Artists Of France Are Changing That Country’s Theatre, Slowly

But French bureaucrats might not quite be with the program yet. “‘Since they didn’t know where to put me, I’m ‘undisciplined,’ ‘ [Phia Ménard] said in a recent interview, looking wearily amused. Ms. Ménard, 47, often perplexes programmers. Her stage productions feature almost no text and operate on an architectural scale, somewhere between choreography and art installation. Their slow-moving tableaux dwarf any human presence, leaving audiences with enigmatic, elemental images — a shadowy army of frozen figures melting before our eyes, say, or a lonely performer struggling in a vortex of fan-powered winds.”