La Faculté

They are between 17 and 20 years old, they run into each other, talk to each other, lie to each other, ignore each other, defy each other, take drugs and make love. They have their territories: the housing projects or the subdivisions, the football field, the faculty. Codes function, prohibitions are contained in the unspoken, until the day when deadly tragedy disturbs the state of things, making conflicts explode, turning upside-down the fragile balance of their micro-society. A racist murder? A sex crime? A tragedy, in any case, like one that is heard in ancient Greece, that crosses siblings, that sets common law against family law. Under Christophe Honoré's pen, these characters from daily life become the heroes of a clash that goes beyond them and forces them to admit what cannot be admitted. It is this theatre of today, always linked to that of origins, that Éric Vigner stages with the actors of the Académie, these young actors who have come from near and far, worthy representatives of the “world's youth”. A laboratory theatre in which Christophe Honoré's “mixed words”, both poetic and concrete, never drawing back before crudeness, give an account of the complexity of amorous desires, the fear of differences, the violence of a troubled society threatening to fall to pieces. It is with these extremely alive bodies haunted by strong words that Éric Vigner occupies the theatre's stage. For a striking portrait stripped of all artifice that is as much drama as pamphlet. JFP