Chapter 14 - Stage Design in Paris

Summary

Thanks to the account books and the archives, it is possible to reconstitute the majority of Molière’s stage designs subsequent to his return to the capital in 1658. During the whole of this second Parisian period, his troupe shared a stage with the Italian actors. Molière gave numerous plays set in a street scene, inspired by the Italian comic decor, such as L’École des femmes or Les Fourberies de Scapin, where the doors, windows and balconies were integral to the action. Molière alternated this type of staging with interior decors – lower rooms – depicting rich bourgeois apartments, as in Tartuffe or L’Avare. If all these plays were given in a single decor, others benefitted from a more sophisticated staging, notably when it was a question of performing in town a work that had been created at court, such as La Princesse d’Élide or Psyché, which required scene changes and special effects. But Molière, who was an excellent scenographer, undertook to create some plays in town that also required multiple decors, such as Le Festin de pierre, which even included a visible scene change, or Le Malade imaginaire, where the decors changed in the breaks between the acts.