Construire un feu ・ Comédie-Française

Marc Lainé has chosen the setting of the Studio-Théâtre, as one accepts a challenge, to stage the vast, snow-covered expanse traversed by the solitary hero of Jack London’s short story, "To Build a Fire".

The author, director, visual artist and scenographer Marc Lainé –who designed the sets for Gontcharov’s Oblomov in 2013 and Maeterlinck’s Interior in 2017 at the Comédie-Française– has chosen the setting of the Studio-Théâtre, as one accepts a challenge, to stage the vast, snow-covered expanse traversed by the solitary hero of Jack London’s short story. With this adventure story written in 1910, just after The Call of the Wild and White Fang, London confirmed his standing as a pioneer of an American literature and cinema that sublimated the relationship between man and nature.
Tom Vincent decides to cross the Klondike in extreme weather conditions, accompanied only by a dog, defying both the wise advice of an old Indian and the animal’s instincts. Marc Lainé sees the protagonist’s recklessness as a remarkable metaphor for the way in which the contemporary world gets embroiled in struggles that are lost before they begin. In an approach that always closely intertwines dramaturgy and scenographic devices, the director taps into the immersive force of this rare and dense text, dividing it up among his actors while using a system of filming and superimposing footage live. In conjunction with the three cameras, scale models are used to project the performances into the metaphysical dimension conjured up by these landscapes of the Great North. Changes of scale, the alternation of panoramic images and close-ups, everything is “manufactured” in plain view in this theatre combining stagecraft and cinematographic technique. The staging sets out to create a tension between the power of language and its representation, the tragic and the poetic –its aesthetic virtuosity aiming to produce a concentrated and raw acting style.

NEW PRODUCTION

In co-production with La Boutique Obscure

Above 12 years old

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