What’s in a name ?
« Illustrate the titles of the 2022-2023 Comédie-Française season »
From May 24 to August 30 2022
"What's in a name?" asks Juliet to Romeo in Shakespeare's famous play. Wipplay and the Comédie-Française ask you the same question. Using the names of the 12 plays in the Comédie-Française's 2022-2023 programme, suggest your best clichés. "Gabriel", "The Snow Queen", "The Lady of the Sea", "Théorème", "Fragments Norén", "Mémoire de fille", "Rien ne s'oppose à la nuit", "La ballade de Souchon", "Le Chien - Les contes du chat perché", "Le Roi Lear", "La Mort de Danton" and "Médée"... Twelve evocative titles that we ask you to illustrate. One photo per play. All the details of the plays can be found below or on the Comédie-Française website. The winning photos will be exhibited in the Salle Richelieu, the historic theatre of the Comédie-Française since 1799.
Gabriel
The heroine, Gabriel, brought up as a boy by her grandfather so that she could inherit the title of prince instead of her cousin, is faced with a choice: remain Gabriel and live as a free and wealthy prince, or become Gabrielle, a disinherited woman and eternal captive of a convent. The question of determinism in a conservative and patriarchal society.
The Snow Queen
A little girl in search of her heart brother and her fantastic initiatory journey full of dangers and trials but also of magic, fantasy and humour. An epic tale based on the legends of the North, which crosses the forest and the land to meet trolls, magicians and other magical creatures.
The Lady of the Sea
A woman divided between a husband and a childhood sweetheart, in a world that is both filled with the doldrums of everyday life and transcended by supernatural phenomena. The stifling calm of a house with no horizon, sea bathing, preparations for a party, are all elements that set the scene for an imaginary world filled with visions and secret nostalgia.
Theorem / I feel a heart to love all the world
The arrival of a stranger in a bourgeois Milanese family intimately upsets the members of the household. They all succumb to his angelic sensuality, only to find themselves faced with their existential void when he leaves as suddenly as he arrived. A way of reexamining the figure of the stranger.
Norén Fragments
A tribute to the Swedish playwright who died in January 2021, through his work: autobiographical plays, realist texts, sociological theatre and existentialist writing. His texts deal, among other things, with the neuroses of families and couples, the capitalist world and the collective image we have of ourselves, the excluded, the marginalized, all those who no longer have a voice in contemporary society, as well as encounters, goodbyes and finally death.
Memory of a girl
Summer 1958. At the age of 18, Annie Duchêne, a holiday camp instructor, has her first disastrous sexual experience with the 22-year-old "boss" and, immediately abandoned by the fantasized lover and scorned by her friends, she throws herself into the arms of other boys. Desire for liberation, humiliation, submission: a story that deals with memory and human impulses.
Nothing can stand in the night - Fragments
A family history, unspoken words and memories, Rien ne s'oppose à la nuit sketches the portrait of a mother, and through her, that of a family shaded by tragedy, a family as singular as it is universal. The third of nine children, some of whom have suddenly disappeared, Lucile is a charismatic young girl who poses for fashion magazines, but who is deeply solitary and withdrawn. An invitation to introspection, a dive into the world of the writer sitting at her desk in search of reconstruction and truth.
Souchon's ballad
Souchon, a melancholic loner or a nonchalant Souchon, a feminine Souchon and a seductive dandy, this eternal teenager full of doubts savours his successes away from the frenzy of consumerism. "I realised that everyone has one of Souchon's songs in their head, often linked to a moment in their life. What touches me most about his personality is that he has crossed the ages in this way, seemingly without a care in the world..." Françoise Gillard
The Dog - Tales of the Perched Cat
The adventures of Delphine and Marinette and their encounter with a dog, man's best friend... Here animals have the art of speech, and our blind dog, bushy and gruff, handles language particularly well. This story tells us about love, loyalty and free choice, about the lost illusions that allow us to grow up.
King Lear
The descent into madness of a king torn between his kingdom and his three daughters.
Through the themes of old age and insanity, filial love and desire, abdication and the contradictions of the patriarchal system, it is the chaos and madness of the world that is revealed in this tragedy.
The Death of Danton
The Death of Danton depicts a generation of men and women engaged in a social struggle that will lead to their downfall, and in particular the fate of Danton, the man who enjoyed life and was a fervent opponent of Robespierre's Terror. Political convictions and the manipulation of popular opinion, the fiery debates of the Committee of Public Safety and the murderous blade of the guillotine are condensed in this crucial moment in the history of the French Revolution, and offer us a poignant reflection on the human condition.
Medea
Daughter of the King of Colchis and an Oceanid, Medea uses her powers to help Jason, with whom she has fallen in love, to conquer the Golden Fleece. But Jason disowns the woman who sacrificed her brother and father for him in order to marry the daughter of Creon, king of Corinth where they have taken refuge. Exile, revenge and love, this drama places at the heart of its story an infanticide whose crime was to haunt the history of Western art to this day. A reflection on Medea the woman goddess, victim and murderer, a woman who transgresses the law, a woman who kills the mother in her, who frees herself from her earthly bonds and transfigures human pain.
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FinishedFrom May 24 to August 30 2022
