Olympe Audouard at Molière Month: a play about the pioneer of journalism

Who remembers Olympe Audouard? Olympe Audouard, the first female journalist is presented at the Auditorium Claude Debussy in Versailles, as part of the Mois Molière, Sunday, May 31 at 7:15 p.m. and Friday, June 26 at 8:45 p.m. Staged by Martin Loizillon, with Gwénaël Ravaux and Nicolas Rigas, the play is written by François de Mazières, drawing on the writings of Olympe Audouard, Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, with a score by Olivier Charade. It puts at the center of the stage a woman born in 1832 — journalist, traveler, activist, witness and performer of a nineteenth century marked by political revolutions, social upheavals and feminist struggles.

The starting point almost borders on a misunderstanding: "Olympe Audouard? You mean Olympe de Gouges?" No—quite the opposite. The show sets out to tell the path of Olympe Audouard, the first French woman journalist, who starts her own newspaper, travels the world, rubs shoulders with the era’s leading literary and political figures, and takes part in the Paris Commune. Through her, an entire century unfolds, moving between salons, newsroom desks, voyages, and barricades. Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Théophile Gautier, and even Baron Haussmann cross her path in a tapestry that seeks to illuminate a woman whom official history has largely left out.

Olympe Audouard moves like a heroine from a serialized novel: she crosses borders, writes, stirs things up, observes the powerful, and rejects the role society would cast for women. Through her journey, the play opens several doors onto the 19th century: the birth of a female journalistic voice, the debates over emancipation, the seismic events of the Paris Commune, but also the power dynamics within literary, media, and social circles. History isn’t presented as a tidy backdrop but as a battleground, alive with voices, struggles, and figures who remain far too little known.

• To be read
• Molière Month in Versailles 2026, the lineup of bargain-priced and free shows
• This week's top picks in Paris and Île-de-France for May 4–10, 2026.

The choice to let Olympe Audouard speak through her own writings, alongside texts by Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas, places the play in conversation with the era’s celebrated voices. This approach could illuminate the gap between the figures memory has canonized and the one who, despite daring, remains largely unknown. With a tighter cast featuring Gwénaël Ravaux and Nicolas Rigas, the production promises a lean, concentrated form where biographical storytelling intertwines with historical reminiscence, without aiming for grand, decorative re-creations.

By putting Olympe Audouard back in the spotlight, the Molière Month invites us to reopen a page of history where the press, politics, and women’s emancipation intersect with surprising modernity. The question remains, simple and to the point, that could accompany audience members as they leave: how many more Olympe Audouards are still waiting for someone to finally pronounce their name?

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