Vanessa Lépine - Amour, Bdsm Et Anxiété - Le Complexe, Lyon

Vanessa Lepine — Amour, BDSM et anxiété at Le Complexe - Salle du Bas

From our intimate vantage point inside Le Complexe - Salle du Bas, we are thrilled to host Vanessa Lepine with Amour, BDSM et anxiété, a solo hour that invites the audience into a mischievous, thoughtful conversation about desire, fear, boundaries, and the funny messiness of being human. Our room is built for this sort of encounter: close enough for the smallest shift in tone to register, precise enough for the rhythm of a well-aimed punchline to ripple through the crowd. Vanessa leans into that proximity. She turns taboo into texture, alternating between confessional storytelling and sharp, economical jokes, letting the laughter arrive alongside the awkwardness it lovingly exposes. Expect a candid exploration of intimacy—love’s tenderness and its power games—braided with the spirals of anxiety that complicate attraction, negotiation, and trust. The effect feels less like a wall of gags and more like an open channel: a comedian and a room engaging in a live, sensitive negotiation about sex, safety, and the everyday catastrophes that our brains invent, all made buoyant by a sly, generous sense of humor.

Artistic momentum, up close

Programming Vanessa at Le Complexe - Salle du Bas aligns with our commitment to voices that bring both craft and courage. Her writing is crisp, conversational, and deliberately structured to keep the audience always one confession behind—moments of hush followed by crackling release. You’ll hear the pulse of contemporary stand-up in her cadences, but also a theatrical attention to silence: the beat before a reveal, the shared breath that makes a room feel complicit. As an artist, she meets the moment with material that is smart about consent culture, honest about therapy-speak, and playful about the rituals of modern dating. Without ever sacrificing laughs, she allows vulnerability to be the engine of the show, not just the paint. Our team cherishes work that evolves across performances; the living nature of Amour, BDSM et anxiété means no two nights are identical. The crowd’s questions, her crowd work, the unpredictable ways an idea lands—these are not detours but the main road. It’s a style perfectly matched to our space, where the distance between performer and audience is deliberately thin, and where nuance doesn’t get lost in the air.

What does that mean for the night you join us at Le Complexe - Salle du Bas? It means an hour of comedy that treats laughter and discomfort as collaborators. The themes are clear from the title, but Vanessa’s approach is more intimate than provocative for provocation’s sake; she’s interested in how kink can be both a language and a mirror, how anxiety can sabotage desire yet also sharpen empathy, how love can feel like both shelter and storm. The pleasure here is in the detail: the tactile realism of a date that goes sideways, the tiny negotiations that make trust possible, the internal monologue of a brain that refuses to keep calm. We know this room, and we know what happens when an artist with something to say meets an audience ready to listen: the show breathes. If you come as a couple, you’ll leave with new private jokes; if you come solo, you’ll feel the camaraderie of a crowd laughing in recognition. This is why we do what we do at Le Complexe - Salle du Bas—curate encounters where comedy doesn’t just entertain but deepens the conversation you’ll keep having long after the lights come up.