Heartlines

A riveting new play on the extraordinary love, art, and resistance of gender pioneers Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore shared an astonishing life grounded in love, nourished by art, and motivated by justice. Using a play-within-a-play structure and epic storytelling, Heartlines takes the audience through the dizzying romance of their early life together in the Parisian avant-garde – and the subsequent fracturing of that life with the rise of nazism. Identities of all kinds are explored, suppressed, and liberated as their love withstands oppression, violence, and time itself.

Cast of 2 actors and 1 musician of any gender and any ethnicity

A pair of Jewish queer lovers flees the fascism of WW II and finds resistance buried deep in their respective art forms. Using play-within-a-play and epic storytelling, real-life artists and life partners Claude Cahun (born Lucy Schwob) and Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe) take the audience through the dizzying romance of their early life together in the Parisian avant-garde and the fracturing of that life with the rise of Hitler and antisemitism during WW II. Identities of all kinds – gender, sexual, religious, national, creative – are explored, negotiated, suppressed, and liberated as Claude and Suzanne invoke their surrealist art through dangerous acts of resistance to the nazi regime. In Heartlines, love perseveres across the perversions of oppression, violence, and time itself – perhaps as an ultimate act of resistance to all three.