HECUBA, NOT HECUBA For his first collaboration with Comédie-Française troupe, Tiago Rodrigues, playwright, director, and director of the Avignon Festival, takes on the story of Hecuba. As is customary in his theatre, with a direct address to the audience, he intertwines the timeless issues of the ancient Trojan woman with those of a modern woman, an actress and mother, caught in similar torments. Tiago Rodrigues often says he doesn’t write plays for the theatre, but for the actors who bring them to life. Here, an actress rehearses Euripides’ Hecuba. She plays the role of Priam’s widow. She who, in the defeat of Troy, lost everything: her husband, her throne, her freedom, and, to her greatest sorrow, almost all of her children. She is a woman who demands justice. Yet the fictional tragedy painfully intertwines with the intimate reality of the actress, whose autistic son has been a victim of abuse, a situation she condemns and protests against. The rehearsal period of the play overlaps ambiguously with that of a judicial investigation. In a unique and twilight-like setting, two worlds come together in a troubled and troubling interplay between the tragedy of myth and that of reality, between the play of theatre and that of justice.
When the actress Bulle Ogier found out in 1984 that her daughter Pascale had died of an overdose, she was at the Théâtre des Amandiers, performing Arthur Schnitzler’s play The Vast Domain directed by Patrice Chéreau, which begins with a suicide and ends with a duel. She doped herself up with sedatives and went on stage – and people say she has never given a better performance. How did she do it? Was it a survival reflex? Is there life after theatre? In 2022, a scandalous affair involving mistreatment of autistic children came to light, shaking Geneva society to its core. Tiago Rodrigues had just rehearsed Dans la mesure de l’impossible and one of the actresses was the mother of one of the children concerned, who was fighting for justice. Unlike the Six Characters in Search of an Author, the mother had her author and, like Bulle Ogier, had to give her all on stage, even though she was devastated on the inside. In Hécube, pas Hécube, Tiago Rodrigues narrates the story of this woman – her name is Nadia – which takes place between the theatre stage and the courtroom.
– SYLVIE BOURSIER, Un Fauteuil Pour l’Orchestre
To lighten tragedy, to give it back the clarity and immediacy that it has often lost: this is where Tiago Rodrigues has established himself as a master, rewriting Antony and Cleopatra and Iphigenia with ease. He is the creator of a ‘translation’ in the broader sense of the word as understood by George Steiner. With Hecuba, he turns his attention to one of Euripides’ lesser-performed plays, about an old Trojan queen in the hour of defeat, the loss of her children and her own doom. The idea is not to present a tragedy in the classical sense, but to set it in a Pirandellian framework that brings a welcome distance and humour, echoing the drama of the Trojan Queen in our own time.
– FABIENNE DARGE, Le Monde
As far as the actors are concerned, nothing feels forced. The fluidity of their performance in the changing light of Rui Monteiro is enchanting. It’s genuine theatrical magic. Elsa Lepoivre is the heroine that every playwright and director secretly longs for to bring light into his work. Both as an actress during rehearsals and as Nadia, tormented by the suffering of her autistic son, she is a magnificent vehicle for both defeat (of Hecuba, who has lost everything) and struggle (of the courageous mother). The two women merge into one, the words of the first comforting the pain of the second. With this profound tragicomedy, Tiago Rodrigues presents to the audience a work that is also, and above all, a declaration of love for actors.
– ANTHONY PALOU, Le Figaro
TIAGO RODRIGUES (1977) Playwright and director who, while still a student, encountered the Belgian company tgSTAN in 1997, an encounter that definitively confirmed his commitment to the collective spirit of theatrical creation. He co-founded the company Mundo Perfeito with Magda Bizarro in Lisbon in 2003 and has since created nearly thirty productions in over twenty countries. These include António e Cleópatra based on Shakespeare in 2015, Bovary based on Gustave Flaubert’s novel, The Way She Dies based on Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina with tgSTAN, and Dans la mesure de l’impossible, a play he wrote based on interviews with thirty members of the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières. After leading the Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II in Lisbon from 2015 to 2021, he took over as director of the Avignon Festival in 2023. There, he notably created Chekhov’s La Cerisaie in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des papes in 2022. His theatrical work, written in Portuguese and published in French by Les Solitaires Intempestifs, has been translated into nine languages (French, Spanish, Dutch, Estonian, Italian, Romanian, German, Arabic, and Korean).
COMÉDIE-FRANÇAISE is a national theatre that tours every season, both in France and abroad, and has so far performed in nearly 80 countries, a tradition that dates to its origins. Comédie-Française’s troupe is the oldest active in the world. This organisation is anchored by the Société des Comédiens-Français, which was established in 1681 and ensures the preservation and advancement of its art. Their motto Simul et singulis means “to be together and to be oneself” and represents the functioning of the organisation: a place with an abundance of creativity and perpetual renewal, which also serves as a conservatory of the arts of expression, a space of ripening and a hearth of creation. With about thirty productions staged each season in its three Parisian theatres and on tour – with sets mostly built in its own workshops – Comédie-Française is a hive with over 70 different jobs performed by nearly 450 people, including around sixty actors and actresses. The spectrum of professions extends from the craft trades to administration, forming a “micro-society” where traditional techniques and latest technologies mix. Comédie-Française presents theatres from all eras, French and foreign, by alternating classical and contemporary repertoire.
