J’étais dans ma maison et j’attendais que la pluie vienne

In the works of Molière as in those of other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors such as Dancourt and Goldoni, the family is essentially governed by relations of authority that women and children try to subvert. This theatrical tradition was profoundly modified by the new drama spearheaded by Diderot, which emphasised the expression of emotions. With Le Fils naturel (The Natural Son) andLe Père de famille (The Father of the Family), Diderot broke new ground, going even so far as to advocate family performances to educate audiences (prologue ofLes Pères malheureux, The Unhappy Fathers). His narrative technique was designed to convince the spectator of the authenticity of the fiction, however not of its autobiographical character, which, much later, was to characterise the theatre of Lagarce. From the tearful comedy of the eighteenth century to the intimate theatre of the twentieth, the family unit is frequently depicted in a precarious state, victim to sharply penned, more or less sombre critiques. Strong contrasts exist in a spectrum that ranges from the comic slices of conjugal life in the plays of Courteline, embellished with unbearable grandchildren or ridiculous older children, to the despondency and angst of the characters in Scandinavian theatre..

Family stories end badly, usually…

Family can kill: witness the girl’s suicide in the family going to pieces described by Ibsen (The Wild Duck), or the father’s suicide in Strindberg (The Father) having descended into madness after a violent conjugal dispute caused by doubts over the fatherhood of his children. Conversely, the absence of a child pushes Yerma (Garcia Lorca’s Yerma) to murder her husband, who denied her motherhood. The confinement of women creates suffering (Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba), or feeds an insatiable expectation (Lagarce’s J’étais dans ma maison et j’attendais que la pluie vienne). As for the return of the son, he is, dramaturgically, a disruptive element of choice (Koltès’ Le Retour au désert). For the more intimate theatre of the late twentieth century, the family is an inexhaustible source of inspiration, as illustrated every season by the texts selected by the Readers’ Bureau, plays such as La Maladie de la famille M. (Fausto Paravidino) or the theatre of Jean-Luc Lagarce, in which the solitude of the characters and the return of the son and the brother in J’étais dans ma maison et j’attendais que la pluie vienne recall Juste la fin du monde, the previous play by the author to enter the repertoire (2008).