Absalom, Absalom!
Based on the novel by William Faulkner
Directed by Séverine Chavrier
Estimated length: 5 hrs. (with interval)
Odéon 6e
© Alexandre Akye
with Pierre Artières-Glissant, Daphné Biiga Nwanak, Jérôme de Falloise, Adèle Joulin, Alban Guyon, Jimy Lapert alternating with Deborah Rouach, Armel Malonga, Christèle Tual, Hendrickx Ntela, Ordinateur, Laurent Papot and the participation of Maric Barbereau alternating with Remo Longo
Resembling an ancient tragedy, infused with biblical doom, Absalom, Absalom! tells the story of Thomas Sutpen, a man who, after leaving everything behind, moves to a small town in Mississippi to develop an immense estate, but fails to found a family due to a background of incest and fratricide. Behind this collapse of social revenge, Faulkner is truly talking about the fall of the American South, this quasi-mythological place in which writer Édouard Glissant points out its illegitimacy due to the combined original sins of slavery and the massacre of indigenous peoples. As is always seen in Séverine Chavrier’s work, the theatre enters into dialogue with literature, music, dance and imagery, and in its brimming urgency, it unmasks America, showing it to be a place where dreams are destroyed rather than fulfilled.
