Phaedra (2004)

Project Coordinator

Company Theatre du Point Aveugle (Marseille – FR)

A Project of 3 versions (japanese, syrian and slovenian) of the piece “Phaedra” of Jean Racine with the:

Slovenian National Theatre Ljubljana, Slovenia

Seinendan Company, Fudjimi – Tokyo, Japan

Damascus Opera, Syria

artistic director: Francois-Michel Pesenti

French director Francois-Michel Pesenti puts on Phaedra, the quintessential piece of classical French theatre about a stepmother’s love for her stepson, which raises questions about the fairness of moral laws, family and society, when faced with such a powerful passion. The texture and trigger of Jean Racine’s tragedy, lie in a series of admissions, be they deliberate, accidental, indirect, faked, shameful… entailing the most severe punishments before leading to a resigned calm-down.
In the poetics of Pesenti’s theatre, characters in a drama are as a rule tied in knots of mental symptoms and complexes – obsessions, neuroses or instincts.
The director’s technique reveals similarities between actors’ personalities and the form of a character in a drama. The actor does not necessarily show his private being, but a cluster of all the tools that make up a dramatic character, which render visible the life experience of a private person, the motivation of the interpreter, the acquired skill, the character’s intention, in voids of a character portrayal. The Slovenian staging of Racine’s Phedra — put on by one of Europe’s best theatre directors, who tests the classical tragedy’s artificiality in creating a show for the new cultural milieu and its language – represents an intriguing viewing experience.

article in french and english about the dramaturgy of F.M. Pesenti interviewed by Jacqueline Caux (ART PRESS magazine):

Click to access les_monstres_fantasmatiques_francois_michel_pesenti_art_press_juill_2005_n314.pdf