Date/Time
Date(s) - 24/04/2014
8:00 pm - 9:30 pm
Location
Goethe Institute, Max Muller Bhavan
Categories
Homage to Marguerite Duras on her birth centenary
The French theatre company Compagnie du Barrage and the Alliance française du Bengale present, on the occasion of the birth centenary of Marguerite Duras, the theatre play Le Vice-consul [the Vice-Consul], adapted, produced and performed by Maud Andrieux.
Marguerite Donnadieu, known as Marguerite Duras ( 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), was a French writer and film director. She was born in Saigon after her parents responded to a campaign by the French government encouraging people to work in the colony. Duras’ early novels were fairly conventional in form; however, with Moderato Cantabile she became more experimental, paring down her texts to give ever-increasing importance to what was not said. She was associated with the Nouveau roman (French literary movement) although she did not belong definitively to any group.
The Vice-Consul is a bleak, enigmatic novel. Set in the steamy monsoon heat of Kolkata, it brings together three suffering characters. There is Anne-Marie Stretter, beautiful wife of the French ambassador, seeking the love of younger men as if desperate for a carefree youth she never had. One of those men who falls for her is the former Vice-Consul of Lahore, an awkward, solitary man prone to violent, irrational rages. And there is a mysterious Cambodian beggar woman whose presence in India intrigues the Europeans, just as the woman herself seems drawn to them.
Adaptation, staging and performance: Maud Andrieux
Artistic adviser and scenography: Frédéric Paquet
Literary adviser: Stéphane Boudy
Light : Frédéric Paquet
Sound : Cie du Barrage
Photography: Sylvain Norget