When looking for one thing you often find another: I came across this DVD of a theatre piece I did not know at all from 2010. I have been enamoured of Nin since coming across her diaries as a teenager. All part of the thread of surrealism that runs through my life, from Alice onwards, I see now in retrospect. Lous Andriessen talks about coming to Nin through his father player her father’s music, then recognising her name’s connection as she came to fame through the diaries. Cristina Zavalloni is absolutely mesmerising as Nin. The Nieuw Amsterdams Piel ensemble brings Andriessen’s composition to bright kinetic life, offering a kind of underpinning of Nin’s emotional changes and highlighting Zavalloni’s sinuous movements (a dancer as well as a singer). The staging is simple and yet so richly evocative of Nin’s sensual and secretive life. The central red divan is used so well.

This is exactly the kind of thing that fascinates me: a multimedia piece about the inner workings of the artist’s mind. The documentary that accompanies it ‘Never a Dull Moment’ is also fascinating to see Andriessen’s composition process, because it gets doubled in his portrayal of Nin’s process and how she weaves the portraits of her lovers into her own stories and the portion she offers of herself to them. The loneliness of this deeply wounded woman that she seeks to salve with the adoration of men and obsessively records in her diaries — only belatedly realising the real power is in her writing.

The final image of the piece renders that so powerfully. It gives such power to the icon of the book — one that Mr Norrell would approve of. Even more so one that Gwendolyn would clutch just as tightly in her arms, ‘I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.’ Nin is one in a long line of women who saved their own lives by trying to make sense — or a least a record — of them.

There are some lovely photos of the premier on Andriessen’s blog. I wish I’d known about it sooner.