Face à face - Parole di Francia Per Scene d'Italia Presents 'Bartleby The Scrivener' With Daniel Pennac

Bartleby The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street will be presented on stage February 5th - 7th 2010.

by Herman Melville

Text in French by Pierre Leyris (ed. Gallimard)
Adaptation by Daniel Pennac
Directed by François Duval
Set design by Charlotte Maurel
Light designer Emmanuelle Phelippeau-Viallard
Reading-performance with Daniel Pennac

Production Théâtre de la Pépinière, Les Productions de l'Explorateur

"I don't remember exactly when I read Bartleby by Melville for the first time. My oldest friends say that I've always talked to them about it. Bartley and his employer fascinate me. The former for his refusal to play in men's game, and the latter for his useless stubbornness of wanting to understand this refusal, both of them through the bewildering and bizarre intersection of two solitudes. If we asked Bartleby the reason of this public reading, he would boldly tell us: "Don't you, yourselves, understand why? And this was exactly what Melville was trying to tell us to see through ourselves, that is through our deepest inner being, where lies this laugh that accompanies everything we do, our most praiseworthy efforts. And, all of my life, I have read aloud. And this, sooner or later, had to end up on a theatre stage. Besides, today, I am as old as the narrator of this story, it might be silly, but it somehow unites us." Daniel Pennac

Daniel Pennac is the author of the Malaussène Saga, a 1957-page fictional variation on the theme of the scapegoat. He has been a teacher for 25 years and wrote, The Rights of the Reader, a tribute to oral readings and Chagrin d'école, a reflection on the calvary of the weakest students, awarded, in 2007, with the Renaudot Prize. He wrote Kamo, a series for young readers, Dog, and the renowned Eye of the Wolf. As for comics, together with Jacques Tardi, he published La Débauche dedicated to all the "dismissed, ousted, expelled, pressured, restructured and globalised people" in the world of work.

However, it was in 2005, with Merci, a monologue on the ridiculous process of the official awarding of prizes and the resulting awkward obligation to say thank you, that he was invited by Jean-Michel Ribes to be on stage for the first time in his life. Bartleby by Melville is one of those stories that has always fascinated him.

The performance Bartleby The Scrivener is part of the event Face à face - Parole di Francia per scene d'Italia, promoted by the Embassy of France in Italy, in its fourth edition.

For more information, click here. 

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