Koło ratunkowe – Molière w Le Théâtre du Soleil

• Authors: Hasiuk Magdalena

Title variants

EN

A Lifesaver: Molière at Le Théâtre du Soleil

Abstracts

EN

Ariane Mnouchkine admitted in one of her interviews that, at the beginning, she had been simply hostile towards Molière and his legacy. Taking it into account makes her struggles with the oeuvre of Jean Baptiste Poquelin even more interesting. It is not accidental that the circumstances of both instances when Mnouchkine had a stab at Molière were similar. Both the film Molière (1978) and the theatre production of Tartuffe were realised at a time of serious problems that Le Théâtre du Soleil faced. And both productions were a lifesaver for the theatre. The screenplay for the film was based on the novel Life of Mr. de Molière by Mikhail Bulgakov. More importantly, however, the whole endeavour was for Mnouchkine a way to confront the heritage of her predecessors with what she was striving for. The outstanding man of the theatre was portrayed in a broad context that included his relationships with his theatre company, the epoch, society that was “barely emerging from the Middle Ages”, and power that revealed itself in the despotism of the king and the fanaticism of devotees. Mnouchkine made her Tartuffe take place in a setting resembling Arabic countries. In doing so, however, she did not attempt to stage Molière “in Arabic” but rather to bring up to date the image of social threat which the playwright in the 17th-century France had seen in zealots. The device she used had also to do with her conviction that making the setting more distant in time and place, a device applied to many different texts, often revealed the essence of the problem. The complexity of Mnouchkine’s attitude towards Molière clearly shows the problems with tradition understood as an act of passing something along. Its most important feature turns out to be the act of creating a space between generations that ensures creativity and development for both parties involved and enables them to transcend the natural bounds of death and deterioration.

Keywords

EN

theatre studies; French theatre; Moliere

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Pamiętnik Teatralny
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 63
• Issue: 4(252)
• Pages: 167-181

Contributors

author

Hasiuk Magdalena

• Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk

References

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