La Ronde ・ Comédie-Française

While he initially wanted his work entitled The Round Dance of Love, Arthur Schnitzler altered the title so as to minimise the risk of censorship, which nevertheless affected his play one year after its publication in Germany in 1903.

It was considered at the time that the Viennese author and doctor – whom Freud recognised as his artistic “double” – was guilty of a breach of morality. Each of the series of short scenes making up La Ronde features a pair of characters from different social classes – prostitute, soldier, wife, count, etc., with the encounter between them ending just after the sexual act, indicated by simple ellipses. With each rotation from one scene to the next, one of the two protagonists appears in the following duet.One hundred and twenty years after the publication of this theatrical curiosity and three decades after Alfredo Arias’ staging with the Troupe, Anne Kessler tackles the strange mechanics and devices propelling this circulation of desire. In the eighth production of the play at the Comédie-Française, the sociétaire deploys her sensitive inventiveness, as already evident in her staging of Marivaux’s Double Inconstancy, revived this season. Going beyond the folklore of the canopy bed, she taps into the density of this ten-dialogue waltz, over which the threat of syphilis hovered at the time. The author thought his little masterpiece was unprintable but already sensed that it would cast “a singular light on certain aspects of our civilisation”.

Creative team

Mise en scène et costumes : Anne Kessler
Traduction, version scénique et scénographie : Guy Zilberstein
Lumières : Arnaud Jung
Son : Dominique Bataille
Travail chorégraphique : Glysleïn Lefever
Maquillage et coiffure : Véronique Soulier-Nguyen
Assistanat à la mise en scène : Rita Grillo
Assistanat aux costumes : Renato Bianchi