Some productions are born from an encounter between the work of a living author and a director. Whether the starting point is an already completed play or a newly commissioned text, a particular dialogue takes shape between the two artists. This season, three productions will be the occasion for public conversations exploring what defines theatrical writing, what drives the desire to direct a particular play, and what the embodiment of a work brings into being.

Three members of the company invite you to spend an hour with literature: a reading of extracts from a text chosen from their personal library, in dialogue with the season's productions.

Over the course of a weekend, four readings of contemporary plays will bring together actors from the company and artists from the Jeune théâtre national, recent graduates of the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique – PSL or the École du Théâtre national de Strasbourg. The plays will be selected from the approximately 350 texts received each year, chosen by a reading panel jointly convened by the Comédie-Française and the Jeune théâtre national — a productive exchange between members of the company and emerging actors .

The Comédie-Française joins forces with the Conseil d'État to bring back to life the great debates that have shaped French history, across three evenings each devoted to a different theme and century — from the eighteenth to the twentieth. For each debate, actors from the company will lend their voices to the parliamentarians, joined by a member of the Conseil d'État who will illuminate these defining moments in French history and oratory with their expertise.

The Comédie-Française and the Musée du Louvre have devised a programme in dialogue, bringing together exhibitions, productions and readings, culminating in La Tour de Nesle, presented in the Jardin des Tuileries as part of Festival Paris l’été et des Étés du Louvre.

Spain — and in particular its Golden Age — will be prominently featured: a dedicated exhibition on the painter Zurbarán at the Louvre, alongside the productions La vie est un songe, Ruy Blas, Le Cid. During the run of the Zurbarán exhibition, the Louvre will welcome the company for a reading of El burlador de Sevilla.

Alongside a further exhibition centred on the Amazons, the company will read Les Amazones modernes, a little-known comedy from the Repertoire.

The Nuits de la lecture will offer an immersion in the artistic world of the Renaissance. In the Grande Galerie of the Musée du Louvre, audiences will be able to attend a reading by the company of extracts from L'Heptaméron by Marguerite de Navarre, a major literary figure of the early sixteenth century and sister of François I.

Drawing a connection between the museum's collections and the production L’École de danse — whose aesthetic draws on the paintings of Degas — members of the company will read extracts from Nana. Zola's descriptions of the theatre of the period accompanied Clément Hervieu-Léger throughout the preparation of his staging. A further reading will be devoted to Claude Monet, on the occasion of the centenary of his death and a new publication of his correspondence. A pianist will accompany both evenings.

In the setting of the salle des manuscrits, members of the company will read extracts from two major authors whose works have been the subject of recent acquisitions by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. One reading will be devoted to Marcel Proust, another to Albert Camus, timed to coincide with an exhibition dedicated to the author.

The Comédie-Française's essential relationship with literature and with the French language has led to an extension of Week-ends des écritures contemporaines in partnership with the Cité internationale de la langue française. Alongside an exhibition devoted to drawings by André Malraux, members of the company will read extracts from his Écrits farfelus. 2026 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the writer and statesman.