Wednesday evening, it is 9:05 p.m. when Richard Berry takes the stage, alone, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris, for the critically acclaimed play "Plaidoiries", which he has performed since 2018. As he prepares to put on his dress lawyer to begin five texts from major legal trials, three Femen arise to cries of "Rideau sur Berry".
For more than a year, the actor has been at the heart of a legal case.
His daughter Coline Berry-Rojtman filed a complaint against him for "rape and sexual assault on a minor" for facts that she places in 1984 and 1985, when she was 8 or 9 years old.
Charges which also concern his ex-mother-in-law Jeane Manson, whom both formally deny.
Supporting the victims of incest and denouncing “the cynicism of the situation”, the three feminists arrive on stage topless.
Their bodies read "Berry pleads guilty."
They came to support Coline Berry, "a courageous woman who, through a poignant testimony, details the sordid sexual games that her father would have subjected her to throughout her childhood" explains the movement on Twitter.
" Seriously ?
How can a man presumed guilty and accused of rape and assault on a minor perform by becoming the spokesperson for those who fight against injustice?
»
Supporting the victims of incest and denouncing “the cynicism of the situation”, the three feminists arrive on stage topless.
Their bodies read "Berry pleads guilty."
They came to support Coline Berry, "a courageous woman who, through a poignant testimony, details the sordid sexual games that her father would have subjected her to throughout her childhood" explains the movement on Twitter.
" Seriously ?
How can a man presumed guilty and accused of rape and assault on a minor perform by becoming the spokesperson for those who fight against injustice?
»
“I have no right to forbid him to do his job”
Present in the room and director of the Free Theater where the play was played, Jean-Marc Dumontet also intervened once the Femen were evacuated.
He clearly supported the actor.
“It's an absolute ordeal to be dragged through the mud of not being able to defend yourself.
As a theater director, I don't have the right to be a judge or ban Mr. Berry.
I have no right to forbid him to do his job,” he said to the applause of the audience.
As for the actor, he finally slips into the black lawyer's robe without speaking about the incident and ends his show under a standing ovation.
After interrupting the play due to the Covid, Richard Berry returned to the stage on the sly last October and continues until June 11 in Paris.
Chance of the calendar or not, the association "Choosing the cause of women", founded by Gisèle Halimi, asked on Wednesday that the excerpt from the argument of the feminist lawyer, delivered in 1972, be removed from the room.
She wants to get this quote “banned” from the show.
Given the accusations against the actor, the association, "supported by heirs" of the famous lawyer who died in 2020, refuses to "accept and / or endorse in any way" the use by Richard Berry of “this fundamentally feminist text”, writes its president Violaine Lucas.
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