This is undoubtedly the major theatrical event of the Parvis's 50th anniversary season. Dominique Blanc of the Comédie-Française, with a revival of Patrice Chéreau and Thierry Thieû Niang's production, brings to life the words of Marguerite Duras. The play, originally staged in 2008, earned Dominique Blanc the Molière Award for Best Actress in 2010. And this revival took place last year under the supervision of Thierry Thieû Niang, based on the staging he had done with Patrice Chéreau. "I'm reviving *La Douleur*," explains Dominique Blanc, "because it's a major text that I've never abandoned. I always told myself I would take it on... to the very end. [...] Celebrating Duras again. Rediscovering the writer and her sharp prose, the lover, rediscovering her anger and her indignation."
The Pain is first and foremost an autobiographical account written in 1985 by Marguerite Duras, describing the unbearable wait at the end of the war to learn what had become of her husband, a political deportee to Germany a year earlier. More than twenty years later, the novella became a play in the hands of Patrice Chéreau, who had already thought of Dominique Blanc, whom he had previously directed in Phèdre and Peer Gynt. "First, I wanted to work with Dominique Blanc again," he wrote in his notes during the creation of The Pain in 2008, "I wanted to share something, to bring that something to life. I wanted to confront this terrible text. To remember it: the Resistance, the Liberation, the camps, this unthinkable period that we have forgotten." And then the incredible return of this man from whom Marguerite Duras separated and whom she loves, the horror of the waiting, the splendor of his resurrection—which is also, in a way, her own creation. Mad hope.
It is therefore a true gift that Dominique Blanc and Le Parvis offer to the audience by allowing us to share Marguerite Duras's anticipation and to see this play, which has garnered numerous ovations.
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