First day
Angèle is my longtime girlfriend. After passing the baccalaureate in Cannes, we moved to Paris for our studies. We are staying in a large apartment lent by his uncle in the Grands Boulevards district. We are not very loyal but remain very close friends. Together, we took acting lessons in a private establishment until I succeeded, a year later, in the competition for a more highly rated school. She just misses it. For the first time since we’ve been living together, I join a group she doesn’t belong to. I’m about to be 20, I want to live experiences, I’m looking for thrills and I’m open to encounters.
In this new course, I notice Amandine who always expresses herself precisely on specific and demanding subjects. His speeches are flamboyant. At ease in her thoughts, she exudes a form of omnipotence and seems to despise everyone, except two or three people, including myself. French by her mother and Malian by her father, she carries with her a heritage which, in my eyes, is unknown, which adds to my interest. I have the feeling that her whole being is political and basically asks one and the same question: how to exist as a black woman? A feeling of rage wells up inside her. I see it as a volcano which at any moment can kill me.
I suggest that he work on the first scene of The dispute (1744), by Marivaux. It is a romantic encounter between two young people, Azor and Eglé, who discover for the first time a person of the opposite sex. Their relationship is very animal. At first, Eglé sees a stream reflecting her image and she finds herself beautiful. Surprised to see her, Azor hides in a bush to observe her. Fascinated, he wants to come towards her but he is afraid. Finally, they get closer until they look at each other, hear each other’s voices, touch each other, kiss each other…
“I pretend to pretend that I like her when in reality I like her. You never innocently pretend to pretend in life”
The plot merges with our budding relationship: as we explore the other through the poetics of Marivaux, our attraction grows. Over the course of the rehearsals, we begin to go further and further into Azor and Eglé’s kiss until we put our tongues out. Are we kissing for real or for fake? We do “pretending to pretend”to use Marivaux’s formula in Good Faith Actors (1748). I pretend to pretend that I like her when in reality I like her. If you think about it, you never innocently pretend to pretend in life. I don’t talk to Angèle about it, I’m not yet ready to leave our cocoon and our memories, I think she knows but she lets me live my experiences.
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