In this play, Jean-Luc Lagarce talks about the final visit of the son or brother to the family home, a storyline reminiscent of Juste la fin du monde (It’s Only the End of the World), the play with which the author entered the Repertoire in 2008 and which was recently adapted for the cinema by Xavier Dolan. Like Ulysses, he returns from his wars, exhausted, and the women lay him down in his room where he sinks into an eternal slumber. They had waited for his return to begin their lives... From that moment, their voices are freed: “we fight once again, for the last time, to divide the spoils of love, we fightfor exclusivetenderness. We would like to know.”
The staging of this feminine play, written by a man, has been entrusted to Chloé Dabert who, after Nadia C., is directing her second production with the Troupe. It assembles a family of actresses capable of embodying these great roles of the contemporary repertoire, not unlike in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, actresses who, in the flow of words, seek out the most correct expression of self, clumsily sometimes, or with anger or joy. This fluid and rhythmic partition calls for a precise, metronomic approach, conducted here as a necessary step to a free performance.

J’étais dans ma maison et j’attendais que la pluie vienne est édité aux Solitaires Intempestifs. Une nouvelle édition de la pièce est à paraître en janvier 2018 dans la collection « Classiques contemporains », avec une préface d’Alexandra Moreira Da Silva.

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Rencontre publique
Mercredi 31 janvier à 14h30 au Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier

CLASSIQUE CONTEMPORAIN ? (GENÈSE, CRÉATION et TRANSMISSION)
En présence de Chloé Dabert, metteure en scène ; Joël Jouanneau, auteur et metteur en scène ; Jean-Claude Lallias, conseiller théâtre pour le réseau Canopé (Éducation nationale) ; Alexandra Moreira Da Silva, traductrice en portugais de l’œuvre de Jean-Luc Lagarce et maître de conférences à l’Université Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. Modérateur François Berreur (acteur, metteur en scène et directeur littéraire des Solitaires Intempestifs)

In the works of Molière as in those of other seventeenth- and eighteenth-century authors such as Dancourt and Goldoni, the family is essentially governed by relations of authority that women and children try to subvert. This theatrical tradition was profoundly modified by the new drama spearheaded by Diderot, which emphasised the expression of emotions. With Le Fils naturel (The Natural Son) and_Le Père de famille_ (The Father of the Family), Diderot broke new ground, going even so far as to advocate family performances to educate audiences (prologue of_Les Pères malheureux_, The Unhappy Fathers). His narrative technique was designed to convince the spectator of the authenticity of the fiction, however not of its autobiographical character, which, much later, was to characterise the theatre of Lagarce. From the tearful comedy of the eighteenth century to the intimate theatre of the twentieth, the family unit is frequently depicted in a precarious state, victim to sharply penned, more or less sombre critiques. Strong contrasts exist in a spectrum that ranges from the comic slices of conjugal life in the plays of Courteline, embellished with unbearable grandchildren or ridiculous older children, to the despondency and angst of the characters in Scandinavian theatre..

Family stories end badly, usually…

Family can kill: witness the girl’s suicide in the family going to pieces described by Ibsen (The Wild Duck), or the father’s suicide in Strindberg (The Father) having descended into madness after a violent conjugal dispute caused by doubts over the fatherhood of his children. Conversely, the absence of a child pushes Yerma (Garcia Lorca’s Yerma) to murder her husband, who denied her motherhood. The confinement of women creates suffering (Garcia Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba), or feeds an insatiable expectation (Lagarce’s J’étais dans ma maison et j’attendais que la pluie vienne). As for the return of the son, he is, dramaturgically, a disruptive element of choice (Koltès’ Le Retour au désert). For the more intimate theatre of the late twentieth century, the family is an inexhaustible source of inspiration, as illustrated every season by the texts selected by the Readers’ Bureau, plays such as La Maladie de la famille M. (Fausto Paravidino) or the theatre of Jean-Luc Lagarce, in which the solitude of the characters and the return of the son and the brother in J’étais dans ma maison et j’attendais que la pluie vienne recall Juste la fin du monde, the previous play by the author to enter the repertoire (2008).

Staging: Chloé Dabert
Scénography: Pierre Nouvel
Costumes: Marie La Rocca
Lights: Kelig Le Bars
Music: Lucas Lelièvre
Artistic collaboration: Sébastien Eveno