 |
|
Simple setting: French actress Dominique Blanc will perform in French in The War: A Memoir (La Douleur) with Vietnamese subtitle on Thursday at Ha Noi Opera House. She has received best actress award for her part in La Douleur during the 24th Molieres theatre award ceremony last year. – Photo courtesy of French Cultural Centre |
HA NOI — Actress Dominique Blanc will perform her one-woman theatrical odyssey La Douleur (The War: A Memoir) at the Ha Noi Opera House on Thursday night.
Directed by Patrice Chereau, the drama won Dominique a Moliere prize for best theatrical actress last year.
Born in 1956 in Lyon, Blanc trained at the French Drama School. She is one of France's most critically acclaimed actresses, with four Cesar Awards (the French Oscars) already under her belt.
Blanc met director Patrice Chereau while working on a production of Peer Gynt in 1981, and the pair have worked together on several successful productions since.
In 1989, Blanc won her first Cesar for her supporting role in May Fools. She also received Cesars for her supporting roles in Indochina in 1992 and Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train in 1998, while also winning best actress in 2000 for Stand-by. She also won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress in L'Autre at the 65th Venice Film Festival in 2008.
In The War: A Memoir, based on the diary of writer Marguerite Duras, Blanc adds a unique resonance to Duras's script. Her performance style is simple, yet intense.
Blanc will perform in French for one night only at the Ha Noi Opera House on Thursday at 8pm.
Born in 1914 in Gia Dinh, near Sai Gon, Viet Nam, after her parents responded to a campaign by the French government encouraging people to work in the colony, Marguerite Duras was the author of many novels, plays, films, essays and short fiction, including her best-selling, apparently autobiographical work L'Amant (The Lover) in 1984.
The book won the Goncourt prize in 1984. The story of her adolescence also appears in three other stories: The Sea Wall, Eden Cinema and The North China Lover. A film version of The Lover, produced by Claude Berri, was released to great success in 1992.
During World War II, Duras spent a long time waiting for her husband's return from a concentration camp. She wrote a diary as a testimony of her own suffering.
The War: A Memoir is a diary that reflects a punishing absence, a threatfull waiting, despair, the shame of being alive while waiting for a loved one to survive unspeakable horrors.
Despite her success as a writer, Duras's adult life was also marked by personal challenges, including a recurring struggle with alcoholism. Duras died of throat cancer in Paris, aged 81. — VNS