 |
The title Jules and Jim conjures up indelible images of the famous love triangle in François Truffaut's film. But in the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché,
which inspired Truffaut, the characters are more numerous and their relationships more complex. |
| Jules, Jim, Kathe, Gilberte, and all the others were real people, and their lives were even more daring and provocative than those depicted in the novel, the movie, or our adaptation. |
 |
 |
They were men and women, French and German, Christians and Jews... While they seem crazy, immoral, and shocking, they held
true to their values: freedom, friendship, equality, sincerity, creation, and pleasure. |
 |
I like to think of them as the only ones with any sanity in a time when the ordinary madness of industrial, political, and military leaders alike
plunged Europe into two monstrous wars in the name of nationalism, economic expansion, and moral order. |
| I wanted to portray this undaunted desire for anti-conformism, this ferocious appetite for life, and this genuine opening of minds. |
"We both loved pleasure for the knowledge it brings, and knowledge for it was our ultimate pleasure." -- Franz Hessel. |
But bringing this mosaic of intertwined love affairs and value systems to the
stage was strewn with challenges. Jules and Jim does not share the classical
simplicity of our previous productions--Salome and L'Amour Médecin--one
action in one place in one day. Its multiple stories unfold in
living rooms or cafés, hallways or streets, bedrooms or meadows--and span over 15 years. With a set which represents one and all places,
the lights which clothe them with atmosphere, the music and the songs
which suggest the country and period and convey the emotions that words
cannot, and finally the movement pieces which complement the scripted
passages, we tried to weave these slices of life together into a colorful
tapestry and draw you into this "tourbillon de la vie" (the whirlwind of life.)
Didier Rousselet | 
|
