An-Nam DURIEU
Stage Director, Actor
An-Nam received a grant to help him study at the École du Nord
What is your artistic background?
After working as a radio journalist, my deep desire to return to the theater was reignited during the 2020 lockdown. It was a very strange, anxiety-filled time. And at the same time, it was a period of pause that allowed me to rethink everything, refocus, and follow the creative instinct that had been dormant since childhood.
I first enrolled in a Master’s program in theater studies at the Sorbonne to reflect on my practice and broaden my perspective and knowledge of theater and performance.
Then I enrolled in an acting program at the Studio d’Asnières, where I had the good fortune to meet and work with female directors who gave me the opportunity to perform. But I already sensed that acting alone wasn’t enough to satisfy my insatiable desire for theater. So I tried my hand at a few short-form projects in 2024, and at that time, the École du Nord was opening a new department specifically dedicated to directing.
And here I am today, creating at this school affiliated with a national theater center. It’s a precious time for exploring and experimenting with writing, dramaturgy, and directing actors in both collaborative and more personal projects.
How do you view your profession today?
The role of a director is so vast, it encompasses every aspect of the theater, interacting with all the trades that make it up, and unfolds across multiple timeframes. But paradoxically, it’s also an underground, often solitary, and subjective profession. It’s at once dizzying and sprawling, yet also incredible to see how a production emerges from this entire network. How everything stems from a jolt, a desire, an obsession, those sudden flashes of inspiration that are then shared with the performers and technicians.
My job is all about sharing with the creative teams and, of course, the audience.
Above all, I’m fortunate to be learning an artistic craft that’s constantly engaged with the world and with others. It’s this interplay between theater and life, the inside and the outside, solitude and the group, the concrete and the mental, dreams and reason, these “frictions” that enchant and energize me every day.
How do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years?
In 5 or 10 years, I hope I’ll still be exploring. I don’t know what forms will emerge from behind the scenes, but I can’t wait to nurture them together with others, surrounded by the best possible people. I see each creation as another step toward discovery, an unfinished answer grappling with impossible questions.
Right now, at school, I’m already planting the seeds for the day after tomorrow. For them to sprout, I’ll need above all to stay attuned to emotion. It takes precedence in my practice.
In theater, I seek to make visible what doesn’t yet appear before my eyes. And to do that, I rely on sensation : the sensory rather than the rational. I am convinced that our sensations are always one step ahead. So I must do everything I can to stay attuned to them today, for tomorrow. They help us grapple with the complexity of a world saturated with words and reductive discourse, with hatred and division.
Long live our sensations!
Interview conducted in 2026
Photographs taken in 2026 by Yama Ndiaye