Marthe Vassallo created this walking performance composed of voices and archive texts after discovering the incredible life story of Maryvonne Le Flem (1841-1926) in unpublished notebooks by Anatole Le Braz and melodies written down by musician Maurice Duhamel. Drawing on the fate of Marivon Vraz and her village Crec’h Morvan and all those “people of little consequence” that history so easily forgets, she portrays the words and laments of a bygone era alongside new songs a hundred years later, in this tender and reverent tribute from one singer-storyteller to another, and from one Breton woman to another.

Using unpublished notebooks by Anatole Le Braz (who had interviewed her for his famous Légendes de la Mort, to which she lent her voice), and scores by musician Maurice Duhamel (who collected dozens of her melodies), Breton singer-songwriter and author Marthe Vassallo has gradually reconstituted the real life of Maryvonne Mainguy, née Le Flem. Her fascination with “Marivon Vraz” grew page by page, through melodies and song lyrics, anecdotes and life stories, official archives and portraits which gradually painted a picture of this bricklayer, seaweed collector, seamstress, single mother, wife of an Icelandic fisherman, and storyteller and singer, leading to this travelling show, Maryvonne The Great, based on archives (documents printed on fabrics) and voices (words, a cappella songs).

In a far cry from fiction, the “giant” from Crec’h Morvan (Port-Blanc, Penvénan) speaks not only for herself, but on behalf of all these “people of little consequence”, who so often disappear without a trace. It depicts the forgotten everyday life of a Breton woman, the laments of a bygone era, new Breton songs and the dream of a bigger world. The show is built up step by step and starts one evening in July 1922 when Maryvonne steps outside her small seaside house, as words from the past echo and resonate with our everyday life, in this beautiful and sensitive a cappella journey paying tribute to an incredible stranger.