La Mer

A major figure of contemporary theatre, Edward Bond has always defended the salutary nature of his violent dramas, relentlessly exploring the powers of theatre to examine extreme situations and to revisit the times and places where humanity has been denied. “Life loses its meaning when you cease to act on the thing that matters most to you: your moral engagement with society. Indifference and cynicism, a pseudo-philosophy (we are all animals), a pseudo-psychology (we are all basically selfish) and a pseudoscience (we all have some aggressiveness in us), in the end gives rise to this pseudo deep insight: life is absurd. If I had to put a name on my theatre I would call it rational Theatre.” Premiered in 1973, The Sea, added to the Comédie-Française repertoire in 2011 without ever being performed, offers a door into the author’s work in which it occupies a special place, belonging to a more romantic register. An early promoter of Edward Bond’s work in France, Alain Françon has consistently staged his plays, whether Coffee, The Crime of the Twenty-First Century or Born at the Théâtre national de la Colline, People at the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe in Saint-Denis, or Chair at the Avignon Festival. With The Sea he continues with his journey with the Troupe, working with them for the seventh time on this production.