The NCPA International Theatre Festival 2018 will kick off this summer with 20 wonderful domestic and foreign plays in 84 performances. In June, two French plays will be put on stage. On the 12^th-13^th, all-star Scènes De La Vie Conjugale will be staged in honour of the 100^th anniversary of Ingmar Bergman’s birth, to reveal the reality in marriage; on the 16^th-18^th, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord will appear with Molière’s comedy Monsieur De Pourceaugnac, a French-style romantic, ironic and invective work, to reveal the changes of life with marriage, money and illness.

Still of Scènes De La Vie Conjugale

In 1973, Bergman spent several months writing a story about a couple’s over 20-year-long daily life after breaking up with his Muse Liv Ullmann, and later in 1975, the film Scenes From A Marriage, adapted from the story, won the Golden Globe Award as best foreign language film. The stage play Scènes De La Vie Conjugale to be performed at the NCPA is also adapted from this classic work of the same title by Bergman. The whole play unfolds around the marriage between lawyer Maryan and Noology lecturer John, telling an emotional story about Maryan and John, who seem to be living a happy life, are already on the verge of divorce... The drama is performed in a single scene. French supermodel Laetitia Casta will play the wife, who struggles against a life in pain in the play; her opposite is Raphaël Personnaz, the husband.

Then, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord will appear at the NCPA International Theatre Festival with its production of Molière’s Monsieur De Pourceaugnac. In 2015, the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord performed Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme at the first NCPA International Theatre Festival. The standard French-style comedy won high praise from the audience. The theatre was founded by world-famous theatre director Peter Brook, who is committed to doing experiments and fighting against the tradition and his style produced far-reaching influence the development of theatre in the 20^th century. Monsieur De Pourceaugnac’s director Clement Hervieu-Léger performed in many comedies at the Comedie Francaise, gaining abundant experience in comedy performances, productions and rehearsals. To re-stage this comedy by Molière, he cooperates with William Christie, Music Director of this play, in making it into a pure comedy by mixing the theatre art organically with music and dance with inspiration from the commedia dell’arte.

This comedy tells a story about Monsieur De Pourceaugnac, a country moneybag from Limoges, coming to Paris to marry Miss Julie, only to forgo the “arranged marriage” finally due to a spoke in his wheel put by resourceful Sbrigani and Nanina, bought off by Miss Julie’s lover. The play is set in the 1950s-60s, making it so logical and reasonable to use light costumes and stage settings. When it is performed, the musicians of the Les Arts Florissants will play music on stage, while the singers and comedians will perform on very intimate terms, to really fuse the theatre with music and make the theatre born of music. The performers will perform with inspiration from the commedia dell’arte, so that the protagonist would run into a group of exaggerated characters that have been dressed up and are good at playing tricks. In this black comedy where all rules are broken and madmen are considered wise, these characters will act out one farce after another by threatening the protagonist, speaking in a different accent, singing hymns and dancing.