Vivre sa vie

By

Jean-Luc Godard

Direction

Charles Berling

Performed by

Hélène Alexandridis, Pauline Cheviller, Sébastien Depommier, Grégoire Léauté

Adaptation libre du film Vivre sa vie de Jean-Luc Godard
Textes additionnels de Virginie Despentes, Marguerite Duras, Henrik Ibsen, Bernard-Marie Koltès, Grisélidis Réal, Sophocle, Frank Wedekind et Simone Weil

Charles Berling takes Jean-Luc Godard’s film My Life to Live on board, featuring a score for three actors and a guitarist in a blaze of love and politics.

This film drew inspiration from two iconic books, namely Nana by Émile Zola and Lulu by Frank Wedekind. Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 film My Life to Live is the story of a young shop assistant called Nana, who dreams of becoming an actress, but finds herself in the street, before turning to prostitution, falling in love and finally falling victim to a stray bullet whilst trying to escape the clutches of her pimp.
To make Nana’s fate more relevant to today’s audience, Charles Berling (inspired by the actress Pauline Cheviller, who introduced him to this magnificent, tragic character) has not merely adapted Jean-Luc Godard’s work to the stage, but has rather created a dialogue with the original. He mingles leading voices from literature, philosophy and feminism with the plot of the film – voices that express singular and contradictory points of view. As Charles Berling points out, “the theatre is not there to provide answers, but rather to open up questions.”

This event is staged in partnership with the “Arts” section of the Art and Literature department of the École normale supérieure de Lyon under its educational and scientific programme entitled “Scenic writing and film”.