Molière à la table en public

In November 2020, when a new closure of theatres was announced, “Théâtre à la table” (Theatre at the Table) came into existence. The principle: a play, four days of rehearsals at the table and, on the fifth day, a recording edited live and broadcast online the next day. The idea was to offer the public the opportunity to experience first-hand the initial construction of a play, the initial sifting through the text in search of meaning. A work focused on the search for meaning, captured visually by the director Clément Gaubert and his team.

When we were deprived of audiences in the theatre, we were lucky enough to be able to go backstage and watch the performance and the live video editing at the same time. We couldn’t help but think how great it would be to have an audience share this experience.
This is how the idea of “À la table en public” came about: actors at the table and, on the stage of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier or the Studio-Théâtre, a play by Molière and a large screen, to simultaneously follow the live performance and what the camera seeks out in the actors’ eyes, their words and their silences. The experience in the theatre, with the actors on the set, filmed and edited live.
The recording, which is edited live, will then be broadcast online. Eight events are scheduled for this anniversary season of Molière.

With the patronage of François Jerphagnon

“From La Jalousie du barbouillé to George Dandin, Molière uses the framework of farce to write a comedy-ballet. But if we take away Lully’s music and its lightness, we discover a cruel drama in which a young woman is sacrificed on the altar of profit by her parents, members of a penniless petty nobility. It is also about the social humiliation of an upwardly mobile peasant by this same aristocracy, men’s contempt for women, and masters’ contempt for their servants. In short, it is about the cruelty subjected upon the humiliated. We laugh, as in all of Molière’s comedies, however this one does not end with a wedding but on a bitter note of collective defeat. Is it a farce? Is it a drama?
A tragically lucid human comedy.
It is a conflict of generations and a social class struggle. I would therefore like to contrast two generations of actors – the youth of Angélique, Claudine, Clitandre, Lubin and Colin with the maturity of Monsieur and Madame de Sotenville. And Dandin, to embody this class struggle between the Sotenvilles, their daughter and Clitandre against Dandin, Claudine, Lubin and Colin. The humiliation is also between generations, genders and social classes: Dandin humiliates Claudine, Colin and Angélique; the Sotenvilles humiliate Dandin but are themselves humiliated by Clitandre, who will be fierce with Dandin and contemptuous with Lubin; Angélique takes revenge and humiliates Dandin with the help of Claudine; does Clitandre really love Angélique or does he enjoy it?
We will be at George Dandin’s table, reading the signs of this humiliating-humiliated couple with an audience that is present or supposed to be.”
Hervé Pierre

“Sganarelle, an emblematic character of Molière’s theatre, whom Molière played himself in the seven plays in which he features, draws the origin of his name from the Italian verb sgannare, which means ‘to open the eyes’, and by extension ‘to bring to light what one does not know or wishes to ignore, to make one understand the truth’! One could not hope for a better guide to Molière’s theatre, a complex body of work behind its apparent simplicity, in which, beyond the voracious energy and the joyful vitality of the farce, a darker, more violent world is revealed upon closer reading. This is undoubtedly where we may find the timelessness and universality of an author who was attached to humanity in all its vulnerability and pain.
In Le Cocu Imaginaire, the violence of the emotions grips us from the very beginning of the play. Paternal violence towards young women, despair, the desire for death, murder, jealousy, revenge, blindness, cowardice and shame. These flaws, pushed to the extreme here, strike us on our first reading. But Molière’s comic genius is to present them to us under the disguise of farce, the grotesque and ridicule, and allows us, through laughter, to exorcise the unease we feel when we think we recognise ourselves in them a little!
This proposal, due to the proximity of the acting and the performance it requires, will allow us to probe more intimately and deeply into the characters’ disarray. Without forgetting the powerful and jubilant vitality that underlies the work and makes Sganarelle, in a way, Molière’s jester, denouncing all humanity’s faults while wearing their mask.”
Thierry Hancisse

À venir au Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier :
MONSIEUR DE POURCEAUGNAC dirigé par Véronique Vella 4 AVR VX-COLOMBIER / 9 AVR en ligne
LES FEMMES SAVANTES dirigé par Anne Kessler 2 MAI VX-COLOMBIER / 21 MAI en ligne
AMPHITRYON dirigé par Jérôme Pouly 20 JUIN VX-COLOMBIER / 9 JUIL en ligne

À venir au Studio-Théâtre :
LE SICILIEN OU L'AMOUR PEINTRE dirigé par Nicolas Lormeau 7 MARS STUDIO / 26 MARS en ligne
LE MÉDECIN VOLANT dirigé par Géraldine Martineau 11 AVR STUDIO / 7 MAI en ligne
LA COMTESSE D'ESCARBAGNAS dirigé par Noam Morgensztern 13 JUIN STUDIO / 18 JUIN en ligne