An impotent old man, Don Juan is as rampant as ever. In his bed attire, a man with pathetic impulses of ardour, surrounds himself with three women, three graces planted in the pillory of lost seduction. Locked up in an old rundown building in Buenos Aires, they cope with their daily huis-clos by repeating time-worn scenes of the old family-style theatre. Together, they dress cheap wigs, tie up the dark red velvet curtains and play over and over scenes from Don Juan. They think that, perhaps, behind these rehearsals lies a more profound echo.Là où Ca Fait le Plus Mal works like a simple story. However, Ricardo Bartís is attacking the myth, this decrepit bone emptied of its substance by having been written so many times already. He questions the moral and social condemnation poured on those who break established order. “All that is left of the myth of Don Juan, are a few tatters, versions of versions, that don't work out, over-subtle. So there cannot be any \'play', this naïve hope for a total work, only left-overs, wild imaginings, incorrectly learnt phrases, empty gestures looked upon with humour and compassion. And this atrocious, pitiless, struggle where bodies are subject to writing, where this volatile experience that is the theatrical act remains frozen in the eternity of writing.” Ricardo Bartís, a leading figure in Argentinan independent theatre since the middle of the 1980s, presented Le Péché que l'on ne Peut Nommer (A Sin that Cannot be Named), based on two novels by Roberto Arlt at the Avignon Festival in 1999.
Distribution
stage direction Ricardo Bartís
cast :Analía Couceyro, Gabriela Ditisheim, Fernando Llosa, María Onetto
assistant :Adolfo Agopian
music :Carmen Baliero
lighting :Jorge Pastorino
Production
Production :El Sportivo Teatral (Buenos Aires)
Coproduction: Festival d'Avignon, Holland Festival (Amsterdam), Hebbel-Theater (Berlin), Théâtre national de Chaillot et Festival d'Automne à Paris, Bonlieu-Scène nationale Annecy
Avec le soutien :de l'Onda pour les surtitres