By Hearsay – Moche, an audio story by Muriel Durant

In tales, the pretty role is always for the beautiful. Shepherdesses or daughters of kings, same fight: a face like the sun, wavy hair, a dream body. The beautiful are kind, generous, intelligent; sometimes, they are poor, but it gets better at the end of the story (they marry Prince Charming…) The beauties are beautiful all the time: when they clean up the ashes (Cinderella!), when they sleep (the sleeping you-know-what!) and even when they are dead (Snow White, in her glass coffin!) The ugly ones? Bad girls, witches, the devil’s cousins. It ends badly for them: punished, burned, or worse yet… not married. And then there is her. This newborn so ugly that she was named “Taupinette”. This didn’t get better as I grew up. Little girl: ugly! Teenage girl: ugly! Young woman: ugly! One day, life puts Taupinette on the road… A journey far from conformity. Want to be beautiful? Rather rebellious! The journey of an extraordinary heroine, in the first sense of the term: who escapes current beauty standards. Muriel Durant offers an adaptation of her only-on-stage “Moche”, a told story mixed with the words of women collected in speaking circles. Production and editing: Muriel Durant, mixing: Vincent Venet. With support from the Gulliver Fund and ACSR