Laureate of the Prix Colette 2024, Aurore Evain is an artistic director, actress, author and researcher. She created her theatre company La Subversive in 2014 and has dedicated both her academic and artistic career to the revival of early modern women’s voices on the stage; she has made several public talks and been a special guest on France Culture and at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
“La Folle Enchère” by Thérèse Ulrich
Thu 24 OctLa Folle Enchère by Thérèse Ulrich was the first female-authored comedy to be performed at the Comédie-française in 1690 and met with great success at Louis XIV’s court. This burlesque play offers a witty version of Molière’s celebrated Fourberies de Scapin [Scapin the Schemer, 1671]. Ulrich’s characters delight in inventive and hilarious scheming to defy society’s patriarchal order – calling for ‘gender trouble’ and ‘social disobedience’ in multiple intergenerational combinations. With great panache and extravaganza, Aurore Evain’s stage production which premiered in 2019 at the Ferme Bel Etat – Théâtre de Guyancourt and at The Théâtre l’Epée de Bois, Cartoucherie de Vincennes, brings a modern edge to this Queer comedy. Through a clever mix of Baroque and ‘pop-rock’ overtones, Evain revives the incredibly resourceful spirit of a woman playwright who was better known for her liaison with Jean de La Fontaine than her creative talent, emancipated mind and avant-garde vision of social relationships.
The screening of La Compagnie Subversive Stage Production: Thérèse Ulrich’s La Folle Enchère (1690) will be preceded by a presentation by artistic director and actress Aurore Evain (laureate of the Prix Colette 2024) and a Q&A led by Séverine Genieys-Kirk.