Hervé Leprêtre
BIOGRAPHY
I worked in many different fields: as a farm worker, a radio host, a sound engineer, a drywall installer, an environmental educator, and more. Then in 1995 I bought a farm in the Creuse region of France and settled there with my wife, Blandine, and our three children.
On May 7th, 2009, at age forty-nine, I had to have my leg amputated below the knee after a logging accident. After being held tight under an ash tree for six hours, I was pulled out, however, in a state of grace, feeling strangely that I had been reborn. Our farm, La Ferme des Soleils, and its hospitality activities were taken over by our two elder children. In 2011 my first testimony of this experience was published by les éditions de La Parole vivante as an autobiographical novel entitled “La vie ne prend que pour donner” (Life only takes in order to give).
In 2017, in the barn on our property, my wife and I founded the Helios Theatre, and dedicated it to beauty. Together with other volonteers, we have organized its programming from then on.
In 2022, once back home from from a bicycle trip on the Saint James Way that leads to Compostelle, I decided to begin testifying in writing and on stage of my unusual life’s path that had brought me to the idea that I was actually lucky to be amputated!
In 2024 I set out again on the Saint James Way, this time on foot, to try out what I had written by testifying along the way. In the town of Moissac I met the woman who was to become my publisher: Michka Seeliger-Chatelain, who had created Mama Editions. Thus in April of the following year “Quand la souffrance devient Lumière” (When suffering becomes light) came out and, thanks in particular to the great visibility given it by several interviews posted on Youtube Zetéo, it has already had a second printing.
Artistic approach
The show called “(Re)Naisance” (Re-Birth) and the book “Quand la souffrance devient lumière” (When suffering becomes light) were created out of a real need on my part. In 2009 my life had been turned upside down by a logging accident that left me with only one leg. While pinned under the tree, I had the good fortune to arrive at a point of being ready to die. Therefore, when I found myself alive the next day, even though one leg was amputated below the knee, I considered it a gift. This feeling has never left me. Do you think it has been easy?
No, it has not been easy. I’ve been amputated twice more since then, and I’ve probably gone through about a hundred different prosthesis shells so far—test shells, temporary shells, and final shells. But, you know? I truly experienced my accident as a rebirth.
In the show and in the book, I tell what happened during the four and a half hours when I was pinned under a tree, waiting for help to come. I tell of what enabled me to hang on and even more importantly of what led to my being found serene and in a state of grace. I take you, the spectator, with me under the tree and let you discover what’s in depths of each of us, at that invisible heart of our being, when we’re on death’s doorstep.
And if this can be helpful to those who suffer, then it’s already a very good thing.
People often ask me what happened next. How has it been for you since then? So I tell them about how things have gone. Fourteen years after the accident, I still want to say that I was lucky to become a one-legged person!
My heart is overflowing with energy and it is this energy that led me to create the show, encouraged as I was by professional actors, stage directors, and programmers who attended my first public readings of the text. It’s a positive text, a testimony of resiliance, a simple yet very moving testimony telling us that in every present moment everything remains possible.
A book published
Performance – Testimony
(Re)Naissance (Re-Birth)
An on-stage testimony (in French)
Coming dates for 2026
Mercredi 24 juin, Montpellier (34), chez l'habitant, 19 h
Samedi 27 juin, La Fontaine de l’Aube, Cadenet (84)
Jeudi 23 / vendredi 24 juillet, La chapelle de l'Oratoire, 14 h, Festival Avignon off 2026, Avignon (84)
Jeudi 6 août / vendredi 14 août, Château d'Alleret, 20 h, St Privat (43)
Vendredi 4 septembre, L'Arche du caillou blanc, 19h, Clohars-Fouesnant (29)
Jeudi 10 septembre, Médiathèque, 17h30, Felletin (23)
Samedi 12 septembre, Salon des Arts Ré-Visionnaires, Aigle, Suisse
Mardi 17 novembre, En trio, Espace culturel La Buire, L'Horme (42)
Mercredi 25 novembre, Forum 104, salle Nymphéas, 19 h 30, Paris (75)
Jeudi 26 novembre, CRé, 27 Rue de la Fraternité, 19 h, Bagnolet (93)Samedi 12 décembre, Théâtre Hélios, Mérinchal (23), 18 h 30
