2004 · Le jeu du kwi-jok ou le bourgeois gentilhomme · Lully · Molière · Vigner (EN)
In September 2004, Vigner directed LE JEU DU KWI-JOK or LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME (THE BOURGEOIS GENTLEMAN), after a comedy ballet by MOLIÈRE and LULLY at the Korean National Theatre in Seoul. In octobre 2004, the Korean artists come to Lorient for five outstanding performances. LE JEU DU KWI-JOK or LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME is awarded the Prix Culturel France/Corée 2004. It forms the theatrical highlight of the 120-year celebration of the Franco-Korean Friendship in 2006 and is on this occasion again presented in France: at the Opéra Comique in Paris in September 2006.
"Towards the end of 2002 I was invited by the Korean National Theatre to work with their ensemble on the production of a piece by a classic French author. When I saw that the Theatre covered a variety of artistic disciplines I felt that it would be interesting to bring them under one hat. We had just staged MARGUERITE DURAS’ SAVANNAH BAY, with CATHERINE SAMIE et CATHERINE HIEGEL, at the Comédie-Française, the "House of MOLIÈRE". The story of SAVANNAH BAY is set in Southeast Asia, and Savannakhet is the name of a province in Laos. It is the region where MARGUERITE DURAS spent her childhood and had a passionate affair with her Chinese lover. The landscapes discovered in the book entice you to explore them. It seems probable that some time towards the end of the 17th century, a Breton sailor on board the ‘Soleil d’Orient’ put to sea from the commercial port of Lorient to land in Korea after a long voyage along the coastline of China."
ÉRIC VIGNER
"When I first arrived at Seoul I was entranced by the discovery of the music, dance and songs of a very ancient culture very much alive, completely new to me. Some of it was folklore, some of it aristocratic. You have to hear the music of LULLY played on old Korean instruments! On my first, preparatory visit, I remember, I once took the underground: the tune that indicated that the doors were about to be closed was exactly the melody that opens the Turkish ceremony in LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME. A coincidence? I’m not so sure. A signal, as likely as not. Sheer courtesy required that what we had achieved in South Korea should be brought back to France and in particular to Lorient, the place whose name and history stimulated our imagination and made us embark on our project: From Lorient to the Orient."
ÉV
The Korean National Theatre is home to several ensembles: ballet, opera, orchestra and the dramatic art. VIGNER worked with 35 artists from all national disciplines, an event unparalleled in the theater’s history, to make MOLIÈRE part of their repertory. For the first time LULLY’s score is transcribed for traditional Korean instruments.
The town of Lorient - L'Orient - the orient - was founded in 1666, in the reign of LOUIS XIV, with the establishment of the French East India Company and the beginnings of trade relations with Asia. The new settlement soon became important when one of France’s proudest vessels was built: the ‘Soleil d’Orient’, a majestic boat armed with 60 cannons, which is supposed to have sunk somewhere off Madagascar; what remained was her name, as the shipyard and the new town were named after her. In 1669 the Sun King commanded MOLIÈRE and LULLY to write a turquerie to make fun of a gardener who had pretended to be an envoy of the Ottoman Empire: LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME.
"LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME is about being different, and also about the future. To the king, the bourgeois, like the Turkish gardener, is simply a laughing matter, but a century later it was the bourgeoisie that was the motive force of the French Revolution. Molière’s works are anything but harmless, and underneath the comedy there is a lot to be learned about history. LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME is the story of a man, still young, married, wealthy, who sets out, for the love of another woman, to discover a world as yet unknown to him, the world of the arts, of music, dancing, poetry, the art of language, the way to dress, the art of fencing, and philosophy, just for the fun of it. Monsieur Jourdain is a man lacking culture who has the means to build, for love, a world in which he becomes engrossed."
ÉV
"Marquise, your lovely eyes make me die of love." [1]
"MOLIÈRE wrote this piece, in which he played the leading part, at the age of forty. He had loved, become a father, had tasted success. Now his message is that love can work a transformation in man. In France Monsieur Jourdain tends to appear somewhat moth-eaten, he is a ridiculous figure, old and grey. As I see him he is a man who loves to the extent of self-effacement."
ÉV
"To begin with we shall learn about the letters and their pronunciation." [1]
- I am in love with a lady of great rank and quality, and wish to ask your help in writing her a note which I intend to drop most casually at her feet.
- Do you want to write in verse ?
- Not in verse.
- You only want prose ?
- No, neither prose nor verse.
- It must be one of them.
- Why ?
- Because any expression is either verse or prose.
- There's only prose and verse ?
- What isn't verse is prose, and what's not prose is verse.
- So when I say: "Nicole bring me my slippers" is that prose ? [1]
"Monsieur Jourdain still speaks prose without being aware that it is prose, this time in Korean language with french overhead-titles. Traditional costumes of luscious beauty, a stage décor resplendent in oriental lacquer… to Lully’s music adapted for traditional Korean instruments, the ballet dancers inspired by an ancient culture - where each gesture, each movement of the hand has a significance of its own - and the breathtaking synchronicity of the interaction between the individual parts of the ensemble would without any doubt have sent some chills down the spine of Louis XIV. The spectacle is complete and the enchantment unique."
Bernard Babkine, Madame Figaro, le 16 septembre 2006
On stage, an amorous white peacock displays his splendid feathers. The Korean artist EUNJI PEIGNARD-KIM, living in Lorient, created the floor painting for ERIC VIGNER’s mise en scène, in black-stone technique.
"ERIC VIGNER transports the onlooker from one enchantment to the next. The spectacle is everywhere: in LULLY’s music so wondrously transformed by the use of traditional local instruments, the singing and the breathtaking dances of Korea’s leading artists, in the costumes of precious moiré silk and the screens decorated with peacock feathers. As the ardent young man that plays Monsieur Jourdain appears on stage, one is joyfully convinced that this ‘Bourgeois Gentleman’ has at long last risen from the limbo of the past."
Maguelone Bonnaud, Le Parisien, 18 septembre 2006
© Photography : Alain Fonteray, Guy de Lacroix-Herpin, Othello Vilgard
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient
Français
Deutsch