Maëlle Dequiedt creates iconoclastic performances combining music and theater. Her shows often flirt with the absurd to expose a profound humanity. She develops stage writing informed by improvisation, putting the performers at the heart of the creative process. Born in Nevers, she studied cello and performing arts before joining the TNS’s directing department in 2013. There, she worked alongside Thom Luz and Séverine Chavrier.
Recent productions include Trigger Warning by Marcos Caramés-Blanco; Gorgée d’eau by Penda Diouf; The Shock Doctrine based on the essay by Naomi Klein; Stabat Mater based on Domenico Scarlatti’s work; and Fwd: Chantal after the films of Chantal Akerman. In the 2025-2026 season, she will premiere An Endless Improvisation based on David Graeber’s anarchist thought at the Strasbourg Musica Festival and Wuthering Heights based on the novel and the life of Emily Brontë at the Cabaret de curiosités in Valenciennes.
Maëlle Dequiedt also works in opera. In 2016, she was a director-in-residency at the Académie de l’Opéra national de Paris. She created The Marriage of Figaro: Variations; A Brief Draft of Human Desires; Salon Strozzi: A Sit-In; L’Enfant et les sortilèges (An Empty House).
Her shows tour in theater and music venues (Comédie de Colmar, Bouffes du Nord, Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, Manège de Maubeuge, Quartz de Brest, Halles de Schaerbeek, Comédie de Valence, Théâtre du Nord, Théâtre des 13 Vents in Montpellier, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi, Théâtre Ouvert, Théâtre Paris-Villette, Grand T in Nantes, Lille Opera, Cité Bleue Geneva, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Rouen Opera, Caen Theatre, Reims Opera, etc.).
Winner of the Cluster Prize initiated by Prémisses in 2017, Maëlle Dequiedt is associated for three seasons with the Théâtre de la Cité internationale. In 2018, she joined the European Campus Valenciennes – Amiens. Starting in 2023, she is associated with the Scène nationale d’Orléans. Winner of the Franco-Belgian Emerge program in 2025, she is receiving four-year support from institutions in Hauts-de-France, Flanders, and Wallonia.
Alongside her creations, she leads practical and teaching workshops, most recently for Opera Ballet Flanders. She is associated with the Performing Utopia program at King’s College London. She works with students at ENSATT.
CURRENTLY IN
Stabat Mater
Fwd: Chantal
Trigger Warning
Salon Strozzi: ein Sit-in
Playing hooky
Sip of water
The Child and the spells
An Endless Improvisation
Wuthering Heights
