Re-prendre les quatre Molière de Vitez (1978): le geste de Gwenaël Morin en 2014, entre rupture et filiation

Abstract

In 1978, Antoine Vitez, founder of the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry in 1971 and at the time professor at the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique de Paris, presented four plays by Molière at the Festival d’Avignon (L’École des Femmes, Le Tartuffe, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope) with the same cast and on the same set. This landmark show is remembered as “The Four Molière”. Gwenaël Morin took up the idea in 2014 and staged these four plays with the same actors and in a single set. He was then director of the Point du Jour theatre in Lyon, known in France for having conceived and defended the permanent theatre in Aubervilliers in the Paris suburbs, which is both a political space in the heart of sensitive and disadvantaged neighbourhoods and a laboratory for theatrical work. The article will attempt to show the similarities and differences between a creation that was controversial at the time and its reactivation, which was well received. What happened in the relationship to the repertoire, to the public and to the traditions of play, between these two moments of French theatrical life?