Press File - Kunstenfestivaldesarts

how Proust changed the ro theater
The English author Alain de Botton has written a book called How Proust Can Change Your Life.
Marcel Proust has certainly changed the life of the ro theater where director Guy Cassiers is
working on the start of a theatrical cycle inspired by the seven volumes of A la recherche du temps
perdu. He has adapted it for stage with film-maker and novelist Eric de Kuyper. This vast project
will materialise in four different productions spread over three seasons. The productions of Proust
1: du côté de chez Swann and Proust 2: du côté de chez Albertine are taking place this
season.
If it is fair to assert that every great work is a genre in itself and therefore unique, then this comment
especially applies to Proust’s novel. Indeed it is a novel with several definitions: a panoramic
documentary covering the last decades of the 19 th century and the first ones of the 20 th century, a
social satire on snobbery, a comédie humaine in the style of Balzac, the novel of a young man
learning to climb the echelons of society, the account of an initiation into love and its countless
mirages, jealousies and disappointments, a mystical poem celebrating timeless ecstasies, a
scientific encyclopaedia, a study on homosexuality and perversion, an artistic pamphlet and a
philosophical writing on time and the functioning of memory. A la recherche du temps perdu is all
that and much more besides.
To adapt it for theatre, radical choices had to be made. Some particular aspects were chosen to be
emphasised, some characters were reduced or combined. The stage version is concentrated on
the people developing at the heart of the novel’s most dramatic episodes: Swann, Odette and their
tempestuous love; Madame de Verdurin and the atmosphere in her society salon; Marcel, Albertine
and their equally tragic love story; finishing with Baron de Charlus and his dark sexual universe.
Through his characters, Proust brings to light the mechanisms determining life both at a social and
personal level.
At the same time as there are several themes, motifs and points of view flowing through
Proust’s work, also emanating from it is an appeal that is both simple and powerful. One of the
chapters in de Botton’s book, ‘How to Open Your Eyes?’, touches at the very heart of what Guy
Cassiers wants to take from it. Reflecting on his role as a writer, Proust wrote: “The writer’s work
is merely a kind of optical instrument that he offers the reader to enable him to discern that
which, without this book, he perhaps had not seen in himself.”
Proust’s writing is a lens of this kind, allowing people to look at themselves differently. As Guy
Cassiers puts it: “The final intention of our production is to stimulate the spectator’s imagination.
It will finally find its form in the head of the person watching it. Modern life has made us
receptive to a multitude of sensory impressions. People in theatre don’t worry, or at least not
enough, about society’s ability to do this. I want to give the audience the option of choosing from
an abundance of signs. In theatre we’re always endeavouring to refine everything, to adapt
everything for the group. For me Proust isn’t someone who’s trying to make everything
converge. Rather he’s trying to show what adapts with difficulty as a fact about human
behaviour. I also want to develop that aspect in the stage form of Proust using a number of
artistic disciplines.”
A la recherche du temps perdu is the story of the initiation of a young man, Marcel, into the
worlds of love, the aristocracy and art. However this initiation into love and passion is
transformed into an apprenticeship in jealousy, manipulation and perversion. In it, high society
unmasked reveals itself to be hypocritical, indifferent and immoral. Only art is saved in it from
dishonour.
In Proust 1: Du côté de chez Swann, Marcel remembers the three women who made a mark
on his early years: his mother, the love of his youth, Gilberte, and Odette Swann. Marcel
describes how, as a child, he used to wait vainly for the precious maternal kiss at night at the
hour that Monsieur Swann was visiting his family, and how he came to know his daughter,
Gilberte, and his wife, the beautiful and mysterious Odette Swann. Another character, and a
regular visitor to the house, Doctor Percepied is concerned about the failing health of the young
Marcel.
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