La Famille Schroffenstein

Heinrich von Kleist is 24 when he publishes The Schroffenstein Family anonymously, a play set in the kingdom of Swabia towards the end of the Middle Ages, the violent story of a family divided into two branches who hate each other but whose respective heirs, Ottcar and Agnes, love each other. If the play is reminiscent of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, its byzantine plot sets it apart, especially when humour and perversity collide, when dreams become nightmares. At once lyrical, violent, and cruel, The Schroffenstein Family is a play in which fantasies only feed paranoia, a paranoia that can become extremely funny to the audience of this feud whose origins no one can remember. Giorgio Barberio Corsetti highlights the impossibility for the characters to understand and to reconnect with the truth of their own history. Mistakes lead to retaliation, misunderstandings to tragic errors, and Barberio Corsetti leads us, along with the characters, towards a tragic climax that will put an end to this war for lack of soldiers. Kleist's first play, The Family Schroffenstein is as crazy as it is exhilarating. The director of The Prince of Homburg offered it to the young students of ERAC so that they could bring their energy to this tragicomedy which they say brought tears of laughter to the eyes of the author himself.

What a life Heinrich von Kleist had: born in 1777 and dead by suicide in 1811, he was by turns a soldier, a jurisconsult, a poet, a short story writer, a philosopher, a publicist, and a letter writer. A Romantic who didn't conform to the clichés of Romanticism, fascinated by Immanuel Kant and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he was also a restless traveller who crossed Europe from one end to the other, desperate and alone. He wrote nine very different plays between 1803—The Schroffenstein Family—and 1810—The Prince of Homburg. Today he is seen as the one who managed to marry, in a classical style, the real and subjectivity.

Jean-François Perrier, April 2014

Direction Giorgio Barberio Corsetti
Scenography Francesco Esposito
Direction assistant  Raquel Silva

Avec les élèves-comédiens de l'Ensemble 21 (en alternance jours pairs / impairs)
Anna Carlier Agnès / Aldörbern et Ursula
Anthony Devaux Fintenring et Le jardinier / Ottokar
Capucine Ferry Jeanne / Barnabé et La femme de chambre
Alexandre Finck Sylvester / Jeronimus
Adrien Guiraud Sylvius et Un passant / Rupert
Laureline Le Bris-Cep Aldöbern et Barnabé / Jeanne
Maximin Marchand Rupert / Theistiner et Le bedeau
Léa Perret Gertrude / Gertrude
Geoffrey Perrin Jeronimus / Sylvester
Juliette Prier Santing, Ursula et Le bedeau / Eustache
Lisa Spatazza Theistiner et La femme de chambre / Agnès
Gonzague Van Bervesseles Ottokar / Sylvius, Fintenring et Un passant
Chloé Vivares Eustache / Santing et Le jardinier

Production ERAC
Coproduction La Friche Belle de Mai (Marseille)
With the support of Fondation BNP Paribas