About the ties uniting the Silence of Molière and the Imaginary Invalid

« This silence, this serene absence of happiness does not help me free myself from certain thoughts, ghosts and remorse. I feel responsible. For I have done nothing. I have not paid tribute to my father, I have not loved him enough, I have not defended him after his death… In his last comedy, the very last one, my father had written a part for a little girl. At this time I was myself a girl between seven and eight years old. I believe my father had thought of me when he wrote this scene, he wrote it for me. My father took the risk of putting a child on the stage because he'd liked to see it act, and he did it for me. On several occasions they tried to have me play the part… »

The start and end of Molière’s silence is the enigmatic image of Molière’s only child, a daughter, “Esprit-Marie Madeleine” whose existence was kept secret. It is the story of a childhood within a family of actors, a world tainted by bereavement, jealousy, anger and theatre. Esprit Marie Madeleine tells of herself and of her father.

The story at the heart of the “Imaginary invalid” reveals another; an intimate and secret story, built on the ties between a father and a daughter; a master and a pupil; a director and an actor.

 

This is not a story about medicine, or rather about the kind of medicine that deals with souls and heavy hearts. This medicine is Art, its doctors are actors, those “who write on sand”, as Antoine Vitez, who could have been our Argan, called them.

The Imaginary Invalid or the silence of Molière was my first show.  It was created nine years ago in Lorient at the CDDB, where I was an associate artist for 10 years.  To celebrate the start of this new adventure in Orléans, we have decided to give it another breath of life and revive it for two special performances.  It is, nowadays, nearly impossible for a debut show to be reprised.  As I start rehearsing “Ordet” by Kaj Munk, my next creation for the Avignon Festival, a show which will launch our 2008 season at CDN, I am keen to give the audience the possibility to be a part of the story, to discover the links that bridge one creation to another. The first show is the blueprint of all those to come and as such it embraces all the rest.

 

The show deals with intimacy, with abandon and death, with memories and their transmission.  It blends real life and theatre or theatre and real life.  The cast included my own father and actor friends.  The show first toured in France in 1999-2000 and was recreated at the Ermitage in Saint Petersburg with Elena Rufanova as Spirit Marie Madeleine Poquelin.  In May 2004, 15 special performances were scheduled at the Centre Dramatique National de Montreuil.  In spring 2007 it was reprised at the National Theatre of Iceland with the actress Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir.

 

The reprise of this show tells of this adventure, of our artistic path and who we once were. But we are what we are today. This story of family, of bereavement and theatre will be told in the present, without nostalgia.