A new theatrical work exploring the hidden lives of women on society’s edges opens in Phnom Penh tomorrow, bringing together a French director of international renown, Khmer performers from the Acting Art Academy and international actress Madalina Constantin in a production whose origins are as unconventional as the story it tells.
Finding Myself (In Mirages), directed by Frédéric Fisbach, runs from March 4-8 at The Last Stage Riverside, with five scheduled performances presented jointly by The Last Stage and the French Institute of Cambodia (IFC).
Presented in Khmer and French (with French and English subtitles), the story follows a woman whose partner disappears. She goes looking for him, and that search takes her somewhere most people don’t go willingly: into the world of addiction, prostitution and survival. The women she finds there knew him. She has nothing obviously in common with them, and yet they talk to her. They confide in her. And she finds a certain, unexpected resonance there.
The raw material at the heart of the piece comes from Antoine d’Agata, the Marseille-born photographer and one of the most significant and most debated figures in contemporary photography. His work is exhibited at the Centre Pompidou, the International Center of Photography in New York and The Photographers’ Gallery in London. He photographed the recent Nobel Peace Prize exhibition in Oslo. He has also been travelling to Siem Reap for years to hold photography workshops for young Cambodians as part of the Angkor Photo Festival – a quieter, less reported part of who he is.
He spent years, however, moving through the world’s harder places, photographing and recording the stories of women living on society’s margins. Based on hours upon hours of these testimonials, he built a body of written work that became the basis for Fisbach’s production.
“It’s a work between different people,” says IFC director Fanny Pages. “The material has been modified, but it goes from the basis of Antoine d’Agata’s writings, to Frédéric Fisbach directing, and also with how the actresses have been interpreting the material.”
Fisbach, a theatre and opera director, filmmaker and actor trained at the Paris National Superior Conservatory, is well accustomed to ambitious and formally restless work. He founded Ensemble Atopique in 1995, was an associate artist at the Avignon Festival in 2007, where he staged a three-day, three-night performance based on René Char’s Leaves of Hypnos, and returned to Avignon in 2025 with Gahugu Gato (Small Country), based on Gaël Faye’s celebrated novel. His collaboration with Khmer artists is a first, making this Phnom Penh debut particularly noteworthy.
“The topics around the stories of these women have existed and [continue to exist] in every society including Cambodia. To be able to work through these texts and learn about their stories and embody them, it has been truly an experience and a revelation. I couldn’t imagine exactly what they have been through nor pretend that I have understood. But the most important thing is that ‘it’s parts of lives that exist and we usually ignore or look down upon’ since it’s not the way we are told to live,” actress Vinich Virak explains.
The premiere is the beginning of the play’s local life rather than its conclusion, as it will return in June for three further performances as part of the Golden Rage Festival, now in its second edition, co-organised by The Last Stage and the Acting Art Academy.
The production is supported by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and IFC. Fisbach’s time in Phnom Penh is also part of a broader cooperation programme between Cambodian and French performing arts institutions, focused on training, creation and the professional development of Cambodian artists.
For more information on Finding Myself (In Mirages) please visit https://www.ifcambodge.com/en/culture/en-ce-moment/spectacles/findingmyself.
