Bérénice ・ Comédie-Française

Prominent Flemish artist Guy Cassiers selected a play by Racine for his second Comédie-Française production, after his 2022 adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “Demons” at the Salle Richelieu

Bérénice was an ideal piece to conduct his usual artistic reflections on European history, on the power of political discourse, on the place of people in government matters, and the way the repertoire remains relevant when it comes to contemporary issues. The elegant style used to deploy the pared-down plot contrasts with the confusing effects of its love triangle. Titus and Bérénice are in love with each other, but Titus faces a dilemma: when his father died, he became the emperor of Rome, and the Senate forbids him to marry a foreign queen. Guy Cassiers presents a strong Bérénice facing both a cowardly Titus and his friend Antiochus, also in love with her, who desperately tries to delay her inevitable departure.
Racine’s Bérénice, which premiered in 1680 at the Comédie-Française, was directed in a most ground breaking way, with aesthetics mixing the highly classical nature of the text to remarkable visual modernity. In this production by Guy Cassiers, known for incorporating video technologies to the dramaturgy of his productions, the scene, set in Titus and Bérénice’s room, “an antechamber where time seems to have stopped”, was devised to perpetually evolve depending on the characters’ mental state, projecting images through video mapping and artificial intelligence. The actors are set to share Racine’s verses within a moving environment illustrating the conflict between political responsibility and intimacy, to try and answer the following question: “How to say goodbye?”

NEW PRODUCTION

ON TOUR
FRANCE AND EUROPE
MAY > JULY

BOOKING OPENS ON
JAN 25

and sponsored by the firm Essayons de simplifier

Creative team

Directed by: Guy Cassiers
Scenography: Guy Cassiers and Bram Delafonteyne
Costumes: Anna Rizza
Lighting: Frank Hardy
Video: Bram Delafonteyne and Frederik Jassogne
Original music and sound: Jeroen Kenens
Assistant director: Robin Ormond

and the Académie de la Comédie-Française
Sound assistant: Samuel Robineau