A. Ernaux and É. Louis – writers of the real, between silence and noise In A. Ernaux’s steps, É. Louis writes to account for truth, to bear witness for the real. They experience sounds, noises and silences as particularly meaningful signs of the social classes that they live in. Their original, popular environment is made of constant noise, whether coming from inside the body or the surrounding working-place. Later as they rise socially, they realise that more privileged classes live in a filtered, muffled world. But being loud may also be a move toward freedom, an expression of the lived experience. The theatre stage is a particularly apt media for the telling of É. Louis’s stories as it enables the varied experiences to be heard and felt through their vibrations, and all noises on stage make sense.