MEDIATHEK

Rules for Good Manners in the Modern World

The subject for the new work is the monodrama Rules for Good Manners in the Modern World (Les Règles du savoir-vivre dans la société moderne, 1994) by J.L.Lagarce (1957-1995), a French playwright, actor and director. The monodrama performed by a young actor is dated at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. In an ironically rich way, the audience is introduced into often absurd rules for good manners, mapping the life of man from birth to death. Despite the fact that the play is designed as a monodrama, its operatic version is divided among more characters, playing and sharing the absurd situations based on the fact that human life is bound by rules for "good manners", playing and sharing the absurd situations based on the fact that human life is bound by rules for "good manners". The choir of 4 singers represents age long guardians of tradition and good manners. The preliminary stage idea includes a "Buñuel-style", absurd festive dinner party, gradually prepared and changed.  The party is being prepared by the chief butler, i.e. the actor, using unrealistic and nonsense objects. Before everybody manages to sit down, it is not a christening party, nor engagement party or wedding party, but a funeral party. Also the image of higher society, as timeless, "bourgeois" aristocracy, has been inspired by Buñuel's films. Despite the outer noblesse and elegance, the acting and singing is sometimes rather distorted.