A reflection on how moving to Paris reshaped my relationship with live art. Discover how accessible, intimate French contemporary theater offers a rich, screen-free way to experience storytelling.

Sylvie Dorliat is a French actress trained at the École du Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Oscar Sisto acting course, and the Jean-Laurent Cochet course, and later at the renowned École Jacques Lecoq, where she also studied classical verse with Robin Renucci. She further developed her practice through work in improvisation, juggling, and Commedia dell’Arte with Antony Magnier, as well as with Antoine Caubet at the Théâtre de l’Aquarium at the Cartoucherie in Paris.

Her stage career spans more than twenty productions, ranging from comedic works such as Woody Allen’s Une Aspirine pour Deux and Jean-Michel Ribes’ Palace to more intense and poetic pieces including Jean-Pierre Siméon’s Stabat Mater Furiosa, which was presented at festivals such as Ellas Crean and Le Printemps des Poètes.

She also performed in the stage adaptation of Philippe Claudel’s La petite fille de Monsieur Linh, a production staged nearly 400 times in Paris (including at the Lucernaire) as well as at the Festival d’Avignon and on international tour, receiving wide critical acclaim.

With Soie, Dorliat brings Alessandro Baricco’s celebrated novel to life through a refined solo performance that blends narration, movement, and emotional nuance.

Is everyone planning a trip to Japan? 

If we are to believe the internet, everyone is traveling to Japan. This seems especially true of millennials approaching mid-life crisis who, as one popular Reddit meme would have it, are training for a marathon, purchasing their first airfrier, showering their growing house plant collection with love in lieu of children, and planning a trip to Japan, in no apparent order. The numbers don’t argue otherwise. Since the early 2010s, overseas residents' visits to Japan have nearly quadrupled, and in 2025, international visitors surpassed 40 million for the first time.  

When I mentioned this apparent surge in popularity of Japanese tourism - especially, as some would have it, among Gen Z and millennial men - to Kerry Smith, Professor of History and East Asian Studies at Brown University, he didn’t bat an eye. 

“That’s still a thing? Cause that’s not new.”

Sylvie Dorliat is a French actress trained at the École du Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Oscar Sisto acting course, and the Jean-Laurent Cochet course, and later at the renowned École Jacques Lecoq, where she also studied classical verse with Robin Renucci. She further developed her practice through work in improvisation, juggling, and Commedia dell’Arte with Antony Magnier, as well as with Antoine Caubet at the Théâtre de l’Aquarium at the Cartoucherie in Paris.

Her stage career spans more than twenty productions, ranging from comedic works such as Woody Allen’s Une Aspirine pour Deux and Jean-Michel Ribes’ Palace to more intense and poetic pieces including Jean-Pierre Siméon’s Stabat Mater Furiosa, which was presented at festivals such as Ellas Crean and Le Printemps des Poètes.

She also performed in the stage adaptation of Philippe Claudel’s La petite fille de Monsieur Linh, a production staged nearly 400 times in Paris (including at the Lucernaire) as well as at the Festival d’Avignon and on international tour, receiving wide critical acclaim.

With Soie, Dorliat brings Alessandro Baricco’s celebrated novel to life through a refined solo performance that blends narration, movement, and emotional nuance.