"La Musica Deuxième," which is "La Musica" enhanced with a second act, tells a simple story: A man and a woman who loved each other passionately, who they tore each other apart and now they are meeting again. No doubt it must be an unconscious choice, although they have to meet for a legal reason, their divorce. What is going to happen? What do they desperately want from each other? We will set the action in the late fifties or early sixties, so that the language and the descriptions perfectly match the culture of the time. But the story could happen anywhere, anytime. The dialogue is surprisingly casual, yet filled with Duras'unique musical style. The English version reminds us of the atmorsphere of a Pnter play, and the characters could be found in a film by the "Nouvelle vague." We will keep this intimacy an this cinematographic language in the staging.
The play is also a relentless and unblinking analysis of a relationship between a man and a woman, in this transitional period between post-war conformity and the social explosion of the seventies. Marguerite Duras put under a microscope the cruel game of thecouple's brutal confessions. Beyond that, the play is a heart-rending cry, a long poem on the impossibliity of their reconciliation. Some glances of joy even laughs will punctuate this "huis clos" filled with silence, desire and suffering.
We will respect most of Marguerite Duras' directions. We will maintain the suspense between the two characters -- where everything is still possible. Nothing is ineluctutable until the last second. In this nostalgic atmosphere of a French provincial town, two wounded people are trying to reach the unreachable. We will bring tot he stage the inner breathing of "La Musica Deuxième."
André Nerman, Director.
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This page was first posted October, 2002. © Marie-Magdeleine Chirol, 2002.
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