If attempting to transmit to stage the push of existentialist ideas ambushing the thoughts of a personality created by one of many nice novelists of the nineteenth century shouldn’t be a problem in itself, to achieve this with minimalist theatre, may be a subsequent to unimaginable prospect.
Yet, French stage artiste Jean-Paul Sermadiras appeared to pull it off with a practised effectivity, as he offered a theatrical solo based mostly on Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky’s story, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” on the Alliance Francaise.
The actor portrayed the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s quick story of 1877, utilizing the naked minimal of props — a protracted bench and a candle lantern — and sparse, however mood-synced items of background rating. The presentation in French has English subtitles projected on a background display.
And, by way of the hour-long present, it felt just like the performer had gripped these within the viewers by their hand and led them to journey with the ideas of the story’s protagonist who has simply resolved to kill himself in a match of nihilist angst.
Things solely get progressively bleak thereon earlier than we’re allowed to breathe in hope and optimism.
The “ridiculous man” struggles to determine the aim of that likelihood assembly with a woman he had met on the road, whose cry for assist he had ignored and hurried residence that night time.
As the protagonist slips right into a vivid dream, the place he has already killed himself, he’s pulled out from contained in the grave by a creature and flown throughout house and time, and discovers a paradise lit up by completely satisfied and harmless individuals, “their knowledge deeper and loftier than science”.
He desires of how he’s the personification of human greed that toxins the pristine place and plagues it with sin, lies, slavery and battle. The first drop of blood is shed, factions come up and conflicts erupt.
Snapping out the dream is greater than returning to a wakeful state, it’s a second of epiphany. Of how the transformative encounter with the unknown woman modified his future, of averting pulling the set off and getting a second likelihood to re-evaluate and rediscover the great thing about existence.
The play alternates between dream and actuality, the factual and the fantastical, the exterior phantasm and the inside journey — a questioning or confrontation between dream and actuality that’s Ythier’s important working axis for the play.
The storytelling construction makes one surprise if they’re certainly precursors of strategies comparable to stream-of-consciousness, even hint parts of magical realism, that will get popularised in literature nearly two centuries later.
Olivier Ythier was stage director and Gilles David, of the Comédie Française theatre group, his affiliate for this co-production of Compagnie du Passage, La Fabrique du PasSage and Les Chercheurs de Lumière with the help of the General Council of Hauts de Seine, of Saint Cloud metropolis and its Théâtre des 3 Pierrots
“Dostoevsky uses this narrative style of a dramatic monologue that gives the feeling that he is speaking his mind to the audience”, stated Sermadiras, who had solely a few weeks earlier, offered “Behind the Veil.. The Era of Mahsa” by Chahla Chafiq set towards the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, on the similar venue.
“The Dream which goes to the roots of a human being is more challenging to adapt to stage than some of the author’s other works like The Idiot or The Brothers Karamazov”.
“Here, I try to live the experience of the text, portray the imagery of the dream as it were really about a place with people… only when the protagonist snaps out of his sleep does the audience return to the reality of the present”, Sermaridas stated.
Generally audiences within the East, the Indian audiences extra so, join with the play maybe due to their publicity to mysticism and spirituality, says Sermaridas, who has co-produced with Ythier, “Et pourtant, c’est la veille de l’aurore” (And Yet, It’s the Eve of Dawn), based mostly on the writings of Sri Aurobindo, Satprem, Charles Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud.
Published – May 14, 2025 09:53 pm IST