Opéra Royal - Molière: DOM JUAN

Location : Opéra Royal

Destination

Place d'Armes

78000

Versailles

GPS coordinates

Latitude : 48.805956

Longitude : 2.122614

Event Organizer

Château de Versailles Spectacles

Phone : +33 1 30 83 78 89

"Château de Versailles Spectacles"

Location

Opéra Royal

Place d'Armes

78000

Versailles

Château de Versailles Spectacles

Presentation

Beautiful chaos

Through a semantic shift around the figure of the libertine, my Dom Juan will be very Sadean, very 18th-century French, with the smell of an unmade bed, an atmosphere reminiscent of Dangerous Liaisons, and an elegant, transgressive, pleasure-seeking cynicism. Sadean because, like this other “great lord and wicked man,” he takes pleasure in doing evil; there is a desire to display his impiety and all kinds of debauchery. In Dom Juan, as in Sade, there will be two deviants, the obstinacy to “put on a show” in all circumstances; in this character on the run, as I imagine him, pursued, holed up in his home, there persists a taste for disguise and all forms of lies. The story is set not so long before the Revolution, which would bring an end to the Ancien Régime and its privileges. Libertinism and the Enlightenment, the excesses of the Regency.

Dom Juan has his Sganarelle, just as Sade had his Latour, a mirror image accomplice to his sacrilegious escapades. Love-hate relationship between servant and master, perverse game of domination, fascination-hatred. The character of Dom Juan is like a Don Giovanni on the brink of the abyss, blasphemous, incandescent, reclusive. At home, in his lair, fire, linen, shadows again. Dom Juan has a sense of numbers, of lists, of cynical accounting of his assaults and conquests. The female body is there. Enjoy it, then debase it.

As the heavens are empty, it is human society that will rid itself of this troublemaker who defies the natural order of the world, who corrupts and threatens social order.

Dom Juan has killed; from the outset, death looms large, a floating presence, and the scenario of what will be his defeat closes in around him. A quasi-family conspiracy is hatched. A woman's revenge is also hatched: “At least fear the wrath of an offended woman.”

The character of Elvire is worth revisiting; powerful, ambivalent, dangerous, sublime, she is beyond grief. At this point, I want to convey a woman's rebellion against a destiny assigned to humiliation and degradation by the all-powerful desire of a man. A cruel separation from the one she loved and what follows.

I am staging Dom Juan after Tartuffe, which we have already performed more than a hundred times, because the porosity of the two works is striking in terms of transgression. Indeed, Molière wrote Tartuffe in three acts, which was banned, then Dom Juan, which was stopped very early on, then Tartuffe in five acts... I am staging these two plays from a woman's point of view and from the perspective of women; where do we stand on seduction and betrayal? Questions about desire, predation, consent, rebellion, and the deadly game of subjugation. To express once again the enjoyment of evil and the mystery of masculinity, which continue to intrigue me.

Despite and alongside the tragedy, this show still offers the joys of a great comedy and hearty laughter!

Macha Makeïeff.

Production Compagnie MadeMoiselle – Macha Makeïeff.

Co-production: Théâtre National Populaire – Villeurbanne; La Criée – Théâtre National de Marseille; Châteauvallon-Liberté, scène nationale de Toulon; Théâtre National de Nice; Le Quai – CDN Angers Pays de la Loire; Grand Théâtre de Provence.

With the support of Pavillon Bosio, École supérieure d’arts plastiques de Monaco.

The MadeMoiselle company is supported by the DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

Set construction and costume design: TNP workshops.

Props construction: DTMS Machinist Constructor from the Jules Verne vocational school – Sartrouville.

The MadeMoiselle company is supported by Spedidam.