L'éveil du printemps

L’éveil du printemps is set in a small morally oppressive town in the provinces, where a dozen teenagers with raging hormones become aware of sexuality, with all its attendant flights of passion and anxieties, and come up against a wall of repression, restrictions and taboos constructed by the adult world.
Death is on the prowl (abortion, suicide, etc.) but the Masked Man, an allegorical, abstract figure, keeps a weather eye open for trouble and makes sure the survival instinct triumphs.

For twenty-four years, this text, written in 1891 by the author of Lulu, has been sitting on Armel Roussel’s bedside table: although he has drawn on it three times already, he has not properly staged it himself before.
In order to do this, and to bring out the play’s ensemble structure more effectively, he has brought twelve actors and two musicians on board. And instead of the stuffiness of bourgeois homes, he has chosen to give the play an open-air setting: a festival on one of the village squares where, on dance evenings, tongues are loosened, desires indulged and gossip spread.