Molière on stage - International Conference

Lessons in Interpretation 

  
The Maison Française, Oxford, June 27-28, 2022 
Avignon, July 11-12 2022 
  
Organized to mark the occasion of the 400th anniversary of Molière’s birth, this joint conference and festival seeks to re-examine his plays, through the prism of modern and contemporary (20th-21st century) productions. The aim of the conference will be to examine the ways in which the great directors of the 20th century such as Baty, Jouvet or Planchon have shaped our understanding of these plays, as well as to understand how the stage can in itself serve as an instrument of knowledge of Molière’s work. How does the director, in staging the text, reveal new dramaturgical functions and mechanisms, which would go unnoticed without the crucible of the stage? 
 Direction is a hermeneutic device by vocation, one that reveals latent meaning – conscious or otherwise – in the dramatic text. But it is also a heuristic device: the great series of incarnations that embodied Molière’s characters (Jouvet’s austere and grandiose Don Juan, Richard Fontana’s feverish and seductive Tartuffe directed by Vitez, the adolescent Agnès played by Isabelle Adjani directed by Roussillon) allowed for an awareness of the plays’ multiple potentialities. Similarly, certain observations on the dramatic structure can only be made upon the passage to the stage (the pacing of the acts, the importance of scene transitions, the structuring of the declamation for the voice, writing conceived entirely according to breath, etc.). Having established themselves as authorities in their own right in the artistic process as of the end of the 19th century, directors have opened new avenues for the continuation of Molière’s legacy and the understanding of his work, which hitherto largely borrowed tools from historical and literary analysis. 
 This conference will adopt a global perspective on the staging of Molière’s plays for live theatre, with a particular emphasis on francophone theatre, where Molière has been the object of numerous adaptations and hybridizations, as well as on theatre in other languages and cultures (English, Spanish, and Asian languages...), where Molière’s legacy is continually renewed through the act of translation. 
  
 
Organizing Committee 
Gilles Declercq, Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, IRET 
Jean de Guardia, Université Grenoble-Alpes, Litt&Arts 
Sylvie Chalaye, Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle, IRET 
Céline Candiard, Université Lumière Lyon II, IHRIM 
Tristan Alonge, Maison Française d’Oxford (CNRS), Université de la Réunion 
Stella Spriet, University of Saskatchewan, Canada 
 
 
Scientific Committee 
Jean-Marie Apostolidès 
Georges Banu 
Jan Clarke 
Marco Consolini  
Sylvaine Guyot 
Tiphaine Karsenti  
Mario Longtin 
Pierre Longuenesse  
Bénédicte Louvat 
Daniel Mesguich 
Catherine Naugrette 
Florence Naugrette  
Wes Williams