Like the other great plays of the author of Lulu, this one still resists all attempts of classification. The author himself referred to it as a “childish tragedy”, the life of these adolescents struggling with their nascent sexuality, confronted with the morality of a hostile adult and institutional world. In 1906, Prussian society saw it as a “pornographic” work, which it censored, before Wedekind came to be recognised, in Brecht’s words, as “one of the great educators of modern Europe”. Freud analysed him from a psychoanalytical point of view, followed by Lacan. The author, who has become emblematic of German expressionist theatre, for his part favours a form of “sunny innocence”.
After dealing with the question of desire and social conventions through Molière’s Misanthrope and then Marivaux’s Le Petit-Maître corrigé, Clément Hervieu-Léger continues to progress through the centuries, while the protagonists have rejuvenated and embody an entire generation. He has put together a team that, among others, includes Richard Peduzzi, the great master of scenography whom he met while working on Patrice Chéreau productions. Sensitive to these carnal awakenings, when nature suddenly erupts, they have focused on the “climates” peculiar to that age when life is unknown and forbidden, a space of play and fantasy.

A scandalous success/a text that is both subversive and modern.

Frank Wedekind’s play deals with a theme rarely found in the theatrical repertoire, the awakening of the senses, desire and sexuality in adolescence. Written in 1891 and premiered in 1906 by Max Reinhardt, it sparked outrage in Prussian society at the time, which dismissed it as pornographic and censored it strongly. Sigmund Freud was alone in praising this so-called expressionist work in the midst of the deluge of insults it attracted. Jacques Lacan followed Freud, writing a preface to the play in 1974. In France, it wasn’t until 1966 that the play was first staged, directed by Jean-Marie Serreau at the Théâtre de Poche - Montparnasse.

The rules of propriety forbade any direct allusion to sexuality in the classical repertoire, all the more so with regard to children and adolescents, long a taboo.

While Shakespeare’s theatre abounds in bawdy episodes, in French it was performed only after undergoing mutilations that expunged lines and stage routines deemed shocking for a public little inclined to appreciate them until the end of the nineteenth century. Romeo and Juliet in particular depicts young people in the blush of first love. In the French repertoire, the plays that more specifically address the awakening of desire in adolescents do so by allusion. L’Oracle by Saint-Foix (1740) or some of Marivaux’s plays, in particular La Dispute (1744), evoke this theme in a roundabout way: as in L’École des femmes, when children are raised in seclusion from the world, in ignorance of their fellows, the discovery of matters of love comes as quite a shock. Sexuality, even when only hinted at, is sometimes enough to provoke violent controversies, such as the quarrel surrounding L’École des femmes, a play accused of obscenity. Beaumarchais’The Marriage of Figaro (1784) shows, in Chérubin, a very young man in love, but the intensity of his nascent desire, which is expressed directly in certain contemporary interpretations, was softened in its first production by the practice of having young actresses play the roles of adolescent males, a tradition that continued up to the twentieth century. The inversion of the sexes thus prevented any overly radical reading. One can also mention Chekhov’s_The Seagull,_ whose Nina character is also at this very particular time of the discovery of the senses.

Wedekind, who remains somewhat unfamiliar in France, is undoubtedly a forerunner and only Thomas Mann and his_Toni Kröger_ (1903) come to mind as a comparable example of a literary work that goes so far in intertwining contradictory desires, the weight of society, religion and education. The theme of burgeoning sexuality has since regularly featured in contemporary theatre, and it has particular significance in the work some authors, such as in that of Bernard-Marie Koltès (Roberto Zucco, Quai Ouest).

Staging: Clément Hervieu-Léger
Translation: François Regnault
Scenography: Richard Peduzzi
Costumes: Caroline de Vivaise
Lights: Bertrand Couderc
Original music: Pascal Sangla
Sound**:** Jean-Luc Ristord
Make-up and hairstyling**:** David Carvalho Nunes
Artistic collaboration**:** Frédérique Plain
Assistant scenography: Laure Montagné