New Trends in Performance Analysis
Patrice Pavis*
Abstract
Using four examples of recent productions as well as select components of the theory of gender, this paper discusses how certain aspects of the theory of gender lead us to other concepts of great importance if we want to go beyond the classical methods of semiotic performance analysis.
Keywords: performance analysis, mise en scène, gender, age, gestus, identities
We watch shows of all kinds, but we are not aware of how to analyze them, and, besides, we do not know if we should call them “spectacle,” “performance,” “représentation” or “mise en scène.” Each of our languages uses different concepts and terms to refer to the object of our perception and of our desire. And yet, each of us knows intuitively that we perceive a set of visual and auditory objects, “real” things, which are also real signs of something. But of what exactly? We then begin to ask ourselves a lot of questions, while the more imprudent and anxious among us begin to set up their list of questions and even propose their own little questionnaire.
That is what I tried to do in the past—was it a youthful indiscretion?—as I would give my students a kind of check-list in order to write down the elements of the performance which make sense (or sensation) and which lead us to an understanding of the “show” (I would rather say in French: of the mise en scène), which organizes this flood of signs.

In the Dictionary of the Theatre (Dictionnaire du théâtre), the reader can find the last version of my own questionnaire (295–96), which I worked out little by little from the 1970s until the end of last century. But every questionnaire, and every questioning, evolves with time because our understanding of theatre and its place in society changes right in front of us without us noticing immediately. In the same manner, the methodology for the analysis of society or of a work of art, which from the 1960s on was often based on structuralism and semiology, became more balanced, taking advantage of a less systematic and broader approach, as in the case of Performance Studies.
While semiology of theatre of the 1970s and 1980s was eager to explain the system of mise en scène, a system based on the director, Performance Studies sought to describe performative actions of all kinds, including actions in daily life. These Performance Studies were not interested, as was the semiological analysis of mise en scène, to describe in detail the various components of a theatre performance. Performance Studies were only interested in discovering all kinds of performative actions, of which Theatre or “performance art” were only a particular case among an infinite number of performative actions in social life.
Under the influence of Performances Studies, semiology of theatre somehow dissolved in a frantic discovery of all kinds of performative and social practices. A theatre production was no longer considered a surface or a space to fill under the magic hand of an almighty director and then to be deciphered by a systematic and obsessive spectator, but as a mechanism to activate, a global action to describe and a movement to follow and to “perform.”
Unfortunately, the semiological formal moment had missed its meeting with the research on the body. The 1980s, 1990s, and the first years of the twenty-first century experienced a growing number of studies on the body and on corporeal practices, particularly on the “body in action,” speech on the stage and verbo-corps (word–body) (Pavis, “Verbo-corps” 395). And even more unfortunately, during these years of the new discovery of the body, theatre theory also missed its meeting with Gender Studies. This crucial moment would have been a great help for the analysis and practice of mise en scène. As Juliette Rennes rightly remarks: “In history, sociology and anthropology, research on gender provides a new light on the use of the body in sport, artistic, religious, professional activities or during interactions or movements in urban space” (14).
We should now move in this direction of Gender Studies to complement and deepen the semiological analysis of mise en scène. The semiological analysis has also evolved because the spectators’ gaze and activity have somehow changed. The spectators of a contemporary production are now less interested in what the artist (director, actor/actress, or any collaborator in the production) meant to say than in what they think they discover in the mise en scène, according to what they like or what suits them, what confirms their taste and convictions. If we want to go beyond classical semiological performance analysis, we should look for other ways of going deeper into a performance/a mise en scène today. Το do so, we should consider how the multidimensionnal approach of social relationships has renewed the research on gender, as an entry into a more precise and gendered analysis of the performance we want to analyze and interpret.
Using four examples of recent productions and select components of the theory of gender, I would now like to check how certain aspects of this theory lead us to other concepts which we absolutely need if we want to go beyond the classical methods of performance analysis. These four examples are:
- Molière’s Le misanthrope, directed by Stéphane Braunschweig (2003): we will particularly consider racial and social identity, questions of “sexual civility,” age and consent.
- Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (Game of Love and Chance), written by Marivaux, directed by Lolita Tergémina (2020): racial and cultural identity, sisterhood and post-colonialist.
- Ce qu’il faut dire (What One Must Say) written by Leonora Miano, directed by Stanislas Nordey (2022): race, post-colonialism, immigration.
- Blanche-Neige et la chute du mur de Berlin (Snow-white and the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Métilde Weyergans and Samuel Hercule (2022): age, agism, adaptation.
1. Le misanthrope
In the final scene (V,3), Célimène has just been confronted by her angry and unsatisfied suitors hounding her. Prostrated on a chair, silent, in a faint voice, she is now under the projectors as a defendant. We witness her social death (gestus). Confronted at last with Alceste, she now talks in a faint voice. But is this really a confession? Not really: Célimène only admits that the appearances are indeed against her, they have betrayed her: “how I must appear guilty in your eyes” (v. 1744); “And that everything says I could have betrayed you” (v. 1745), which means: it looks that . . . but, in fact, no. In admitting that Alceste might have a reason to hate her, she knows that this will cause the opposite reaction in her lover: not hate but passion and love, despite everything.
Let us concentrate on four aspects of the final confrontation between Célimène and her suitors; and let us introduce the four notions of social relationships of this “multidimensional approach” (Rennes 22). Sexual civility, gender, age, gestus.

Sexual Civility
Irène Théry’s term “sexual civility” refers to a certain type of relationships between men and women. “The spirit of the morals of a society, the ‘rule of the game’ which tells what everybody can expect from everybody, according to their social status, age, and gender or their location within kinship.” This sexual civility “relies on an allowed sexual life (what is tolerated, preferable, prescribed, valued, celebrated) and a forbidden sexual life (what is ill-considered, the cause of jokes or of gossip, but also depreciated, shameful, forbidden and radically taboo). The allowed and the forbidden evolve together.”
What about sexual civility in Molière’s play? Nothing is said in the play, but Braunschweig almost shows a sexual relationship between Alceste and Célimène. What kind of civility connects them? At what level, for this couple, can we talk of “consent”?
The term “consent” (consentement), even if it means here in the text the acceptance of punishment and hate, sounds today as the central notion of the #Metoo movement for consent, the acceptance of a sexual relationship. Célimène’s consentement rhymes with Alceste’s ressentiment in this scene. Even if the legal term consentement (consent) does not have the meaning it has today, we have to admit that Célimène has indeed to consent to marry the “man with green ribbons,” and on top of that, to follow him and to bury herself in a social desert, with Alceste as only jailer.[1] But Célimène does not consent to an even more terrible thing for her: “to renounce the world before getting old” (v. 1769). The prospect of premature aging leads her to refuse marrying Alceste.
Gender
The gender of the characters and the difference between genders are strongly marked in Molière’s play, and even more in Braunschweig’s production: the verbal and almost physical violence of the suitors finds in the final scenes its true expression. The “petits Marquis” and Oronte made the parodical effect of a Drag queen. Their violence as an offended male now bursts out. Oronte for instance: “I found my vengeance in what you are losing” (v.1706). Faced with all the accusers, Célimène seems to have lost all her charms and esprit; she is no longer quick at repartee. She suddenly seems speechless, destroyed. At first, Alceste reacts with magnanimity but also with some self-satisfaction, and later with anger, when he understands that Célimène will not accept his offer. Finally, Célimène decides by herself how she intends to live. Molière makes us feel the strengths and weaknesses of each gender.

Age
Age plays an important role in the play, even if no precise age is given to Alceste. Alceste himself refers to Célimène as “this young widow” (v. 225), which could mean that he is or feels much older than she is. But age difference is apparently no problem for a man like him. More than the exact age, getting older and ageism (discrimination against old people) worries Célimène a lot. She can’t imagine to “behave prudishly while she is only 20” (v. 1983), and she is not willing to “renounce the world before getting old” (v.1769).
Gestus
Gestus, or Sozialgestus, a Brechtian notion, makes gestures, attitudes, exchange of gaze between characters understandable, in whatever social and hierarchical relationship they find themselves. This can be perceived in this scene: the relationship between Alceste and Célimène is not simply personal, erotic, psychological, and so on. It reveals a relationship of power. After the scandal involving multiple love letters, Alceste is in a position of socioeconomic superiority. The art of the actor and of the director is to know how to figure out the gestus and for the spectator or analyst to be able to spot the traces of these more or less deep wounds.
One should point out that Brecht’s notion of gestus does not differentiate between genders, as if power relationships would not make any difference between genders or would automatically transcend sexes. Braunschweig, however, seems to show a clear difference between men and women.
When one crosses (“intersects”) these four parameters of civility, gender, age and gestus within this multidimensional approach of social relationships, one can test the validity of each component but also of their addition, or even multiplication of their effect. The notion of “intersectionality,” proposed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, to evaluate the interaction of gender and race in the context of violence toward women of colour, could also be used for other components of Gender Studies.
As in the case of the intersectionality of human relations in conflict, we could define the task of mise en scène not only as the integration into a coherent and interactive of the different sign systems (in classical semiology) but also as the integration of a few pertinent notions of gender theory applied to performance analysis.
2. Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard

Translation in Réunion Créole
From the last scene of this play, we can get a general idea of the style of the entire mise en scène. Marivaux’ conclusion is extremely brief and expeditious. This last sequence gives little time to show the end of the double disguise, the happiness of the couple of masters reunited at last, the disappointment of the servants, particularly Lisette, who refuses to clink glasses with the family of Orgon. Arlequin alone has joined the family, while Lisette ostensibly leaves the stage and the party; a move which is not mentioned in the play. The general impression is, nevertheless, that of a happy end, performed as a musical comedy (Brahms’ allegro of Ungarian Walz n°5 playing at each end of act), played at each end of act). Lisette, leaving the stage without a word, does not become a notable counterpoint to Orgon’s harmonious family and of the nice polite, noble and deserving young man who came to marry the young lady, daughter of Orgon.
Identities
It would be, however, unfair to confirm this first impression without asking what lies behind it. The performance—this is at least my hypothesis—can be approached and described through different identities which we must discover, describe and, above all, compare with one another.
First of all, the linguistic identity. The text of the play has been translated into Réunion créole, a language understood and spoken by most La Réunion people. It is not common that a classical French text be translated in Réunion créole, perhaps because most the inhabitants of the island could read it in French. But many people, whose language of usual communication is créole, would appreciate that literary masterpieces would be made available in their own mother tongue. Listening to a play by Marivaux in creole is an unusual experience. Its translation has certainly been a challenge, given that some expressions of the play would seem for a metropolitan French audience difficult to understand and, therefore, difficult to transfer in contemporary French. These expressions cannot, therefore, be translated literally, one must paraphrase them, looking for an expression which is close to the original text and, at the same time, understandable by creolophones.
Let us take an example: Lisette says to Arlequin (thinking he is Dorante the master): “Kanminm sa, lé posib ou inm amoin in ta minm? Mi ariv pas mèt sa dan mon tèt.” In the French original, it reads: “Mais est-il possible que vous m’aimiez tant? Je ne saurais me le persuader” (ll, 3). The first sentence can be easily understood and translated as a calque, a loan translation. The second sentence remains understandable today, but its elegant style is also very tortuous (“Je ne saurais me le persuader”: “I would not know how to persuade myself of this”). The translator, who is also the director and an actress in the performance, did not venture to translate the original French literally and chose a wording which will immediately appeal to the creolophone audience, and can actually be understood by a Metropolitan French speaker: “Moi, j’arrive pas à me mettre ça dans ma tête”: “No way for me to put this into my head.”
This particular example helps us understand that linguistic identity is part of cultural identity, therefore of the culture and the situation in which the language is used; a culture for which one must know the rules, the different levels of style, habits and customs, the socio-economic functioning and so on.
But let us briefly return to the question at our starting point: How are we to analyze a performance and not stay on its surface, and not pass value judgments which do not really help us understand the mise en scène? How do we go beyond a purely descriptive semiology, how can we resolutely approach the work of art through the prism of a broader theory; in particular, the theory of gender?
In the huge field of cultural identity, one should make a distinction between the national identity and the racial identity of the réunionian spectators. If we consider, for instance, the cast of this performance, do the actors see themselves as Réunionnais versus Metropolitans? Do they feel exiled if unemployment on the Island has forced them to look for a job and stay in the metropole? Do they see each other as “economic migrants,” and are they seen as such by the Metropolitan population? All these somewhat naive, yet useful, questions always resurface as soon as we have to analyze and interpret, and therefore judge, a performance such as this one which is far from usual norms and habits. Thus, judgment, or aesthetic identity, plays willy-nilly a role as soon as there is an analytical gaze on the work and we begin to ask questions which we deem legitimate in our critical approach of a work of art.
Thus, the question is: How are these different identities linked, and in what way does our understanding of them help us analyze the mise en scène? In this production of Tergémina, there are no hints to the historical, social and economical situation of the island and to the French bourgeoisie and slave trade. But does the use of créole, hint to it without the Metropolitans noticing? No allusion to racial, socioeconomic or gendered inequalities. The very abstract set (movable screens) does not refer to a particular location and time. The acting style is very sit-com or boulevard comedy; no allusion to the Comédie-Italienne acting style. We are also very far from a mise en scène in the spirit and style of Brecht, Vilar, Planchon, who always aimed at contextualizing the Classics, be it the time when the play was first performed or the way it is now staged in a contemporary setting.
Unfortunately, the mise en scène, unlike the créole translation, does not refer to the sociopolitical situation of the island, in particular its colonial past. Officially, La Réunion is no longer a colony (since 1848), and the law applies indistinctly to all citizens of the French Republic. Are we now in a postcolonial or neocolonial society? The production does not ask (itself) this type of question.
One can feel the director’s decision not to mix theatre art and politics, not to project unto the play painful current issues as, for instance, the property of the land, the widening gap between the very rich and the very poor, the impossibility of getting out of one’s class. Hence, maybe, this lack of a personal, new or provocative point of view on Marivaux’ play and, therefore, the lack of a mise en scène with a new and original point of view on the play. Hence a certain academicism, a “well-made mise en scène” (as we would say “a well-made play”), which gives us a welcome but soon forgotten pleasure. Mise en scène is, thus, only the simple, or rather simplistic, easily accessible, organization on stage of materials and signs. As simple or simplistic as its analysis, and with no particular hermeneutical difficulty.
Is this not a return to a standardized mise en scène before the inventive and provocative mise en scène of the 1960s to the 1980s of a Vilar, Planchon or Chéreau?
3. Ce qu’il faut dire

Miano’s text and Nordey’s mise en scène are structured as a monologue in three parts. Three actresses, three points of view, three steps build a marked out itinerary:
- The white question: a black “I” addresses a white person.
- The bottom of things: the necessary step to touch on all questions, even those which make you angry, particularly the issue of postcolonial France.
- At the end of the ends: it is both an exclamation of irritation, when one wants to finish with a problem, and go to the end of a question: here with Maka, while hoping to convince him, in spite of pain, the pain of “overcoming it” (45).
We should particularly examine the system of the three monologues, spoken by three different actresses, whose difference is marked by a certain progression towards a political consensus. Their progress (and their progression) is bound to their ideas, their argumentation, their conclusions. One could even read this difference in the color of their costumes (green, red, black) as follows:
- Green is the color of hope, of a still optimistic and open debate.
- Red is for an aggressive pouring out of reproaches to “les Français.”
- Black could refer to the mourning of all victims of racism, who no longer believe in a way to eradicate it. Also, because the former colonized victims sometimes team up with the black (and white) neo-colonizers.
“In his mighty name I greet you, from elsewhere
You/Who said/Black
You insisted
You wanted we see each other like that That we like that talk about colour
Not really of the skin Of its colour
Of its surface
If we had come on the organic field of skin
It would have quickly become the question of sensation
Of touch Of emotion Of contact Of a kind of depth
If we had entered into a metaphysics of skin
Maybe the meeting would have taken place
But no The colour
You insisted
For the sake of peace and quiet
I signed my surrender Not without naming my conditions Formulating my claims
It was my turn to Talk Wrote the Black in Letters patent of nobility
Decided that Black would be my Authority on my destiny
Black would be my attitude My way of holding my head My value more than my colour
I made my rhythm resound Shivered then stamped my dances
So that black would from now on be transcendantal trance Movement of resiliences.”

The first monologue immediately asks her listener-reader-spectator a direct question: why is s/he afraid? Of what? “du noir”: afraid of darkness? Or of the unknown? Or blackness? Of a black person? But does a black person seem so different? The reason for talking of “black”—says the speaker—is not bound to the skin or to the color. It is “a way of taking side to take a position Occupy a space To give you a mission To give you a mission to wall up in the race” (14). This assignation, this summoning of the other is what from the outset blocks the encounter, the point of departure which must be overcome. The female speaker regrets it from the outset: “If we had come on the organic field of the skin/It would have become a question of sensation Of touching Of emotion/ Of contact” (10). But instead of that, after this misunderstanding, “you are the one who talk of repenting” then of “bad conscience” (13). And indeed, why, in the encounter of love or eros, why should we speak of the color of the skin, of the black skin? Should these things not be situated at the sole level of the skin?
The second monologue, endeavors to go to the “end of things” (17). This gives us the possibility to check how this rather complete issue is organized. Since the “absent-present” person she was speaking to “does not want to talk” (14), the second speaker will take care to explain the main, remaining questions, even if they can’t be answered. This clarification is a real theoretical presentation, philosophical as well as political. But if “one only talks about this “in France In Europe” (the ça, or the “es”), “the obsession of the population,” this “ça,” this “es” is not the Freudian “es” or the sex; it is rather “the not wished-for immigration” (19). It must, however, wait until it is introduced and seen in History, which “moves forward resolutely,” “full of meaning” (18): “coffee sugar cane tea hot chocolate,” but also “diamonds, petrol and uranium”(19). Just a way of reminding us that colonialism handles persons like exploitable raw materials.
After these few examples (sometimes questionable) of colonialism in the United States, we move on to the example of the Europeans and in particular French in Africa:
“I see you Smile Nodd
The Europeans The French particularily Like to imagine they are better than the US Americans More refined More Cultured More secular More egalitarian And of course/less racist/
They forget a little quickly la souche (the stump, the stock) from where the passengers of the Mayflower had grown Now, the stump which one talks about all the time in France the stump which one reveres so much in France Since it is in its name that the status of immigrant is endlessly transmitted From generation to generation Well then, the stump must have a certain importance Unavoidably
The French are Cartesian The French are rational they would never make a distinction between the upholders of the Stump and the other people If all the this would be meaningless/Blood Lineage Race/This is how one would say in the old times One would say The Race to refer to the stump
To say French of souche, of stump Is to maintain that there is a French race. To say French of souche Is to maintain the purity of French blood” (21–22)

In the second part, the tone of the monologue has become polemical, in particular with the expression “français de souche” (French “of old stock” or “of French extraction”)—souche meaning stump, the lower part of a tree remaining in the ground. This image refers to the person at the origin of long descent (lineage), as opposed to a naturalized person or to an immigrant.
We move on rapidly to the usual, but arguable, critique of the Cartesian spirit—supposedly French—or the time of “Les Lumières” (Enlightenment), in the eighteenth century, supposedly the accomplice of French colonial expansion.
All these reproaches and accusations are sometimes somehow severe and unfair towards the French. And, by the way, who, apart from a few cranks, still talks about race or even French blood? On the other hand, the obsession with race, the hierarchy of races is indeed, in most contexts of colonization, a strong belief. One of the consequences of colonization has been the issue of assimilation, and this would need further explanation.
However, the important thing is to understand the logic and dynamism of the link between the three phases or steps:
- An invisible “you” is being addressed to and asked to answer the question of the white issue.
- A “you, France,” in a rather frontal attack, not really expecting a reply.
- An attempted dialogue, in spite of everything, including between compatriots and friends, like the speaker and Maka.
In the middle part, one is both impressed by the accumulation of arguments, by the multidimensional approach around the notion of gender, and frustrated by the absence of dialogue with or against an addressee. It could also be that we remain too attached to dramatic or dialogic theatre, or at least by a theatre of exchange, as it is only sketched with the character of Maka in the third part.
“Imagine, Maka, we would take History by the other end? I mean by this end which is not the one of pain, but the one of its overcoming. Imagine. Consider that pain is the point of departure, but that it is not the final goal and that precisely between these two, History took place. Do not think of yourself, do not think of us, Maka, through the wound inflicted upon us. Don’t pay too much attention when counting the dead, Maka, and do not hope to make them live again just by putting their names on plaques. Everyone rushes one’s way through the cities of the world, and only tourists are interested in the plaques. One fixes them, one cuts the ribon and nobody cares anymore.I understand the desire of revenge, the need to shine, because our existences are coated with dark matter. But what kind of logic should be applied to the procedure? What is the meaning of the struggle? Is it about changing the world or simply about taking the place of the mighty of the moment, to put our steps in their steps or even to be only invited to join the happy few.
Listen. We have recently seen the conquerors busy removing their dust. Somehow perplex, we watched the show: it was indeed time to clean up the mess, to look at ourselves, but something was still escaping us. Why put the garbage in the the living-room, when it would have been enough to come from behind?
Then we got it. Hegemony had its death rattle, causing a moment of madness, fear and panic to no longer be the center. Hence these meaningless acts, the downloading of the dump truck in the master’s bedroom.
The misplaced garbage is not responsible. Not as such. They however symbolize and set free forces which we already see at work. It will take more time than one thinks. We will have to clean longer than what we thought. One will have to clean. To wash the world.
And we are in the world, and we are the world.” (45–46)
In this long quote from the third and last part, the speaker addresses Maka, an “afropean” friend (from sub-Sahara, but having always lived in Europe). She quotes him a few times; she interprets his dreams. This is the only time in the play when she talks with a fellow countryman, who is much older than her, born and apparently well-integrated in France, albeit with no great hope to “meet” French society: his only task is to deliver the mail in the enterprise. The speaker tries to give him hope and confidence for the future, because “at the end of the day, we are going to live. Here. Somewhere else, with everybody else, with all our own people” (51). “[T]he point is to refuse that the ‘wildering’ of the world goes on” (51). But Maka does not really believe in fraternization because “how to fraternize. When the heroes of the one are the executioners of the other” (51). The speaker is ready to discuss this, even if “it will be a long evening” (51).
Maka’s skepticism toward fraternization and reconciliation counter-balances and relativizes the constant, militant efforts of the three women, who might be seen as alter ego of the author. She warns us, in any case, against the risk that the colonized might take their revenge and take the place of the former colonizers, the “conquerors” of the old days: “the greatness as the conquerors see it is also what you long for. It is what you wish for your own people” (46).
In this third part, we find a real catalogue of ideas and concepts turning around the notion of colonialism, along with a number of notions helping us clarify the notions of race and racism, poverty and violence, class struggle at the time of postcolonialism.
The spectator stays a little unsatisfied and uneasy with the abstract juggling, with the abstract political, moral or psychological notions that the speakers sometimes thrust forward, not certain that they can be heard and by whom.
Fortunately, Miano’s writing finds a delicate balance between political ideas and literary style. Literature—be it poetry, style or écriture (writing)—corrects and softens the abstraction of a political essay. But where and how can we define the role of the director in this example? Analyzing such a performance obliges us to concentrate more on the text than on the aesthetics of the mise en scène (space, actors and so on). Unless one can point to contradictions or simplifications in the arguments of the three speakers, unless one would want to propose a different or critical point of view on all these ideas, we cannot imagine what the director would want to re-interpret and add to what the speakers have stated so clearly and so peremptorily by the author through the/her three voices. This does not mean, however, that the director is not organizing and controlling the whole performance; that is, orienting the mise en scène according to his own view? The choice of space, the way of whispering or declaiming the text are artistic elements, and they remain under the supervision of the director. In that sense, the director and the actresses, as well as all other collaborators, are, and obviously remain, creative subjects. They must only be careful that their ideas do not contradict, subvert or destroy the ideas of the author Miano, but also that these ideas try to explain everything or make the text too explicit.
In spite of the great number of theoretical or political notions used by the three speakers, we might have to limit ourselves to the notions of the triptych gender/race/class. We only have to “intersectionalize” these three notions. In other words, we should describe the social interactions in the different discourses of the three speakers. Asking ourselves not only to which social class the speakers belong, but, above all, what they want to tell us about the social dimension of the persons mentioned in their speeches.
In spite of the great number of theoretical notions belonging to the theory of gender, one is able to regroup and intersect many of the different notions, at least and above all the triplicate gender/race/class. We notice, however, that the item Class is the less present in the social identification of the speakers (themselves and in the world they are describing). These speakers are more neutral instances, not clearly socially defined. They only exist as speakers, as speaking subjects, explaining everything but, so to speak, off ground, “in the air,” as if they were “neutral scientists,” free floating intellectuals. Consequently, their socioeconomic identity is virtually non-existing. Only Maka is situated on the social scale: a civil servant, poor but irremovable. On the other hand, the third speaker, the one ready for compromises, a successful intellectual and writer, a double of Miano, surely is able to invite for dinner a simple man with less money and with no illusion for the reconciliation and social peace. Maybe this is also a move towards equality between the sexes, thanks to the, albeit exceptional, success of the black intellectual woman (a triple handicap?).
4. Blanche-neige et la chute du mur de Berlin
“This is the kingdom. This is how architects, who were not afraid of being ridiculous, have called this suburb where we live, here in this tower. Because, frankly, this kingdom is not too good.
And yet, here there is something really amazing, something marvellous. Look I am going to show it to you.
—Mirror, o my mirror, who is the most beautiful in the kingdom.
—That’s you, Madam, you are the most beautiful in the kingdom.
It tells me things I like to hear;
—Come on, Blanche, we have to go.
Two at the front / Two in the center: two at the rear. Beef or Chicken
—Good evening, Blanche.
—Hi. Today, with Abde. . .
—Mirror, o my mirror, who is the most beautiful in the Kingdom?
—That’s you, Madam, you are the most beautiful of the Kingdom
This has been going on for years. Every evening it tells me things I want to hear.”
The making of this ciné-spectacle (the term used by the directors) in front of us is as interesting as the story told and the performance as a whole. The pleasure of the spectator consists in observing live the actors and musicians create the performance bit by bit: sound, music, narrative, text spoken by the mother. This actress seems to be dubbing the text of her character for a film or a radio play. The two metteurs en scène (directors) are also in fact monteurs en scène because they are clever manipulators and friendly menteurs en scène (liars): they produce, organize and transmit all components of the performance, creating little by little the radical adaptation of Grimm’s fairy-tale. The live montage of all elements of a production reminds us the fragility and the beauty of any theatre production, which always runs the risk of a mistake, an error of the actors’ timing.
What remains from the fairy-tale of the Grimm brothers? Most of the motives are used, but in a spirit and with a meaning totally different from the original fairytale.[2] The mirror does speak, but with a sepulchral tone of voice. What it says is a thought spoken to herself, and not a reflection of her vanity; rather, the fear of getting older. She never thinks about getting rid of her adopted daughter; on the contrary, she cares for her “difficult” teenager and protects her from any danger. The real mother of Blanche did not die but, as a very young mother, she felt unable to raise her daughter. She reveals the situation in one of Blanche’s dreams: “I got so scared that I left for ever. I could not take care of you, Blanche. Fortunately, somebody replaced me.” Blanche finds her adoptive mother “thousand times more beautiful than herself. And she could not care less that her “mother is more beautiful.”
“The question of age difference and of aging seems central in this adaptation dealing with the role of women in education. As a specialist of Genre Studies, Juliette Rennes underlines the importance of age as a category of analysis which makes it possible to explore certain invisible aspects of studies on the connection between social relationships. Within the epistemology of the notion of intersectionality, age holds a marginal place in comparison with the triptych genre/race/class” (48).
In this ciné-spectacle, age is frequently referred to. The mother, an air-stewardess, is 42; her adopted daughter, 15. The issue of aging is not directly mentioned by the mirror or by the mother, the mirror only says who is the most beautiful in the kingdom. Age and beauty, however, are suggested the time spent with her make-up and by the time the mother has to work and the permanent smiling at the passengers. The spectators surely ask themselves if Blanche’s mother also looks obsessively in her mirror, maybe because she worries about an age-limit for air-stewardesses.
The different hints to aging—its advantages and its ravages—should be seen in connection with the socio-economic situation of the family. The mother lives in a modest HLM building, “The Kingdom,” and she worries about the long phone calls of Blanche. The father, who left the family 12 years ago to make a career in a Russian circus, can only send (rotten) apples for Blanche’s birthday.
Agism, in the exact meaning of the term, refers to “all possible attitudes, stereotypes towards persons defined and classified as old, for both sexes, but according to different modes and to a different chronology” (Rennes 54). In this version of Snow White, aging is only suggested as fear of losing one’s beauty and one’s social status (for the mother and stewardess), but also for Blanche’s difficulties of leaving the status of an adolescent.
In this version of Blanche-Neige, we witness the “construction of gender” of Blanche and watch her “itinerary of gender” (Jablonka 92). We also perceive her filial identity: at first rejecting her step-mother; and later, after her discussion with her boyfriend (with an Arabic name) who advises her to trust her mother. All is well that ends well.
Conclusions
We have suggested that the study of gender (and of its many different specific questions and problems) has been greatly renewed by the multidimensional, intersectional approach of social relationships thanks to Gender Theory. The task of the spectator or of the analyst of the mise en scène is to reveal these social relationships in the making of themise en scène as well as in its reception. We have noted the importance of the Gender Theory, which is both global and differentiated. These are not simply new tools to refine performance analysis but offer a new point of view; a feminist and critical point of view on what a text and its mise en scène can tell us and show us. Thus, we now have at our disposal additional critical tools, which, moreover, are intersectional, multiplied and demultiplied. This provides us with a better view, both global and fragmented, of the theatre.
It would seem that the monteurs-menteurs-metteurs en scène (fitter, liar, director) Métilde Weyergans and Samuel Hercule make the same point when referring to their Blanche-Neige and the fall of the Berliner wall: “Our performance always play with a double reading which we can have of an event or of an attitude according to one’s age, culture, experience of life.”[3] We could extend the list of these “double readings” and of the different theories, particularly feminist theories, which support them.
With this collection of four recent productions, I have discerned four tendencies of contemporary mises en scène, and maybe also four ways, slightly different, to analyze them. At the risk of oversimplifying, let me sum up their originality:
- Le misanthrope (Molière/Braunschweig) is a mise en scène d’auteur (as one spoke from a film d’auteur in the 1960s), in the tradition of the mise en scène of the Classics in France of the 1980s; a slight modernization of the story, with a few provocative highlights: for instance, when Oronte says his poem as slam poetry, or when Alceste, just coming out of Célimène’s bed, is getting dressed, while making a scene to her about her lovers. We noted a great sensibility for the question of gender; in particular, the notion of consensus.
- Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard (Marivaux/Tergemina) is a mise en scène which is a reasonable, old style, funny, but sometimes clumsy, redundant, in the style of Boulevard theatre. It does not dare, nor wish, to let the play mean what the situation of the audience could have easily suggested: an explosive, postcolonial and patriarchal situation in La Réunion. However, the burning question of race, postcolonialism, inequalities is never directly or indirectly addressed.
- Ce qu’il faut dire (Miano/Nordey): Miano’s text is more a theoretical and political essay than a one (wo)man show by three actresses. This triptych is artificially dramatized. The text remains a univocal monologue going in the same unknown direction. The staging and directing aims indeed at respecting the ideas of the author and at making them understandable, but it has to give up any external director’s gaze, necessarily subjective. The bad conscience of the director is understandable because it reflects the bad conscience of the spectators, who, in their vast majority, understand and approve the ideas and theses mentioned. This bad conscience might also be shared by the author, frightened as she might be, to have, albeit masterfully, “gotten it off her chest.” She almost apologizes, admitting that “the evening might be long /and long also would be the road towards fraternity” (51). In that sense, the mise en scène submits to the usual political and polemical discourse, as it contents itself to ask the actresses to use the same minimalist and fragile gestures, and the same involuntary repetitive and stereotypical tone of voice.
- Blanche-Neige et la chute du mur de Berlin (Weryergans and Hercule):The message of the adaptors-editors-directors-actors is simple. Grimm’s fairytale is adapted for a more contemporary reading, thus avoiding any supernatural effect. The metaphor of the wall between the different persons or generations, particularly between mother and daughter, the comparison with the Berliner wall which eventually falls down, is banal, butthey can be read as an ironical comment on fairytales and also as a subtle study on the modern, restructured family. A playful, joyful mise en scène built from heterogeneous elements, patiently assembled. A mise en scène which reconstructs instead of deconstructing.
Returning, finally, to the introductory question and to the title of this paper on the “New Trends in Performance Analysis,” and reconsidering the difference which we established between the semiological analysis of the performance, on the one hand, and the interpretative synthesis of Performances Studies, on the other, we have seen that both approaches tend (or should tend) to concur and meet, and even to combine and amalgamate. To which we should add, or rather integrate, different components of Gender Studies which we find useful for the technical and the hermeneutical analysis of mise en scène.
Note: A shorter version of this article was presented at the international conference organized by Varna Festival in July 2023, with the title New Tendencies of Performance Analysis.
Endnotes
[1] Molière uses the term consentement in Tartuffe in the sense of #Metoo. Elmire says to her husband: “Si ce consentement porte en soi quelque offense, tant pis pour qui me force à cette violence.” (v.1517–1518).
[2]There are numerous theatrical or filmic adaptations. There is even an adult film: Blanche-Fesses et les sept mains (Blanche-Bottom and the Seven Hands (Nain=dwarf, main=hand).
[3]Dossier de presse.
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*Patrice Pavis was a professor of theatre studies at the university of Paris and at the University of Kent (1976-2006). He is an honorary fellow of the University of London (Queen Mary), a professor Honoris Causa at the Universities of Bratislava, Sofia, Targu-Mures. Last publications: Contemporary Mise en scène, Routledge, 2013; Routledge Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary Theatre, Routledge, 2016; Performing Korea, Palgrave, 2016; Dictionnaire du théâtre, 4th edition, Armand Colin, 2019. Poème toi-même, Novel, 2021.
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Critical Stages/Scènes critiques, #30, Dec. 2024
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