Comedians in period costume strolling at the King's Potager,
The School of Women
in the open air: like a mini-festival in Avignon, the
“Mois Molière”
transforms Versailles into an open-air stage, despite a reduced format. year due to Covid.
At the Grande Écurie which faces the castle, putting on make-up and dressing in rooms fitted out as dressing rooms, three actors from the Viva company do not hide their excitement, nor their stage fright, before the premiere of a new production of
L '
Molière
Women's School
.
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"This is our first of this show in front of an audience, and it's been several months that we haven't played (...) so it's super exciting and at the same time quite stressful"
, told AFP Eva Dumont, who plays the role of Agnes, ward of the tyrannical Arnolphe who seeks to marry her.
"It's been a bit of a mess because it's been a year ... but it's magic, it's very moving,"
adds Mikaël Fasulo, who plays Arnolphe.
Organized every June for 25 years, canceled in 2020, the
“Mois Molière”
has seen the number of performance venues reduced from 70 to ten.
35% gauge
In the courtyard of the Grande Écurie, the mayor of Versailles François de Mazières, a theater enthusiast who created the festival in 1996, watches with emotion the stands fill up.
"It was necessary to maintain the tradition"
, despite a gauge of 35% until June 9 (then 65% until June 30), he told AFP.
At the end of the play Tuesday evening, the public reserves a standing ovation to the three actors and the director Anthony Magnier.
"We have a thirst to meet again ... even if everyone today has Netflix and Amazon Prime, nothing replaces the fact of living together a story"
, comments the founder of the company Viva.
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In addition to a popular and free theater party, the challenge of the festival has always been to be a springboard for emerging companies before their participation in the Off d'Avignon, the largest live performance market in France.
"Rather, it is fairly young troops that we invite here, who make their creations, it allows the shows to be broken in"
before going to present them in the city of the Popes, explains the mayor. Normally, the first spectators to arrive were the first to settle in.
“People came in advance, played cards, it was very nice. This year, we book on an internet platform and we pay one euro instead. But if someone does not come, he is taxed ten euros, ”
says the mayor, smiling.
"The year where never"
The festival, which despite its name does not exclusively present pieces by Molière, has become so important for small troupes that some have become residents, such as Viva, or even Phenomena et Cie, an association founded by Stéphanie Tesson.
If the festival combines the name of the most famous French playwright with the city of the Sun King - where Molière had several of his plays performed in front of Louis XIV - it summons another great name.
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At the Potager du Roi, Stéphanie Tesson has been staging for 18 years walking shows around the fables of La Fontaine. Its actors and actresses lead, through orchards and in costume and wig, the public in wanderings by reciting to them
The Wolf and the Lamb
,
The Turtle and the Two Ducks
and others. This year, which marks the 400th anniversary of the birth of the fabulist,
"it was the year or never to speak again of this great immortal poet"
, indicates Stéphanie Tesson.
"And perhaps what we have just gone through makes us more sensitive to his painting of a society where all the faults, all the secrets of the human soul are explored."