A professor passionate about 'Phaedra' wants to entrust his love to the Library Theater.

BarcelonaThe first time actor Romain Daroles performed Phaedrus! He did it in a high school classroom, before the eyes of expectant students who had no idea what the boy was doing talking about Jean Racine's work. The show, written by Swiss director François Gremaud (Bern, 1975), was initially conceived as a performative conference to bring this classic closer to teenagers; in fact, for four years it made its way through Swiss high schools. Its success in the classrooms pushed the play onto the mainstream theater circuit, and from there it continued to take off: in 2019 it was performed at the Avignon Festival and now it's landing in Barcelona, ​​​​in a national premiere that will take place this Wednesday at the Biblioteca Theater as part of the Flaix de Tardor festival and will be performed in French with an envelope. "There have been more than 500 performances. It's a widely performed production that explains Phaedra in a different way, with a sense of humor and accessible to all," summarizes the artistic director of Flash de Otoño, Narcís Puig.

Every time he goes on stage, Daroles has the challenge of transforming himself into a teacher passionate about Phaedra who wants to spread his love for Racine's work to all those who listen to him. "We've maintained the initial structure designed for schools, in which the teacher starts and progresses a bit like a Trojan horse. The audience gradually encounters the surprises and wordplay of the play, and realizes that it's all fun," explains the performer. He goes in and out of Racine's text, combining the role of the teacher with the play's characters and also alternating Gremaud's text with the Alexandrine verses of the classic. "The initial idea was to try to capture the attention of a teenage audience at nine in the morning. That's why the show is full of humor and homages to Racine's language," adds Daroles.

A work where history is a pretext

In French-speaking countries, Phaedra It's a well-known text that has been performed in schools. The actor has found, however, that when he's brought the show to other countries, such as Italy or Germany, it has taken on a different meaning. "When I perform it abroad, I feel that the pedagogical dimension is stronger, because the text isn't as popular. It makes more sense to perform it before an audience unfamiliar with Racine, because it gives him more value," Daroles emphasizes. Phaedra It is a tragedy published in 1677 and which is close to the Greek myth of the same name, about a woman in love with her stepson Hippolytus. "In reality, however, the story is a pretext. The most important thing is what happens between the performer and the audience. Despite the distance that separates us – and here even more so, because I speak neither Catalan nor Spanish – the objective is to give the audience an intense theatrical experience, and that's why I work above all through the masks, making the show very visual," he explains.

In keeping with the idea of a performative conference, the stage space and costumes of Phaedrus! are based on simplicity. Daroles appears before the audience wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, and performs accompanied only by a table. "Gremaud's reference is Peter Brook and the idea that with nothing, you can do everything," the performer notes. "That's why we play with empty space and with the intention of leaving room for the imagination."