Le Père

About the show

André, a once proud old man, is showing the first signs of mental degeneration. His daughter Anne, who takes him in at her apartment where the play takes place, seeks only to help and protect him, but the progression of his illness becomes inexorable. Both angry and distraught, he gradually loses his mind and reverts to childhood under her clouded gaze. Through stagecraft, the production draws the viewer into the twists and turns of a diseased mind: the actors' roles swap and become interchangeable, furniture changes from one scene to the next, and the dialogue repeats itself. The viewer is brought inside the father's head, hence the misunderstandings and the feeling of constantly being caught between truth and fiction, nightmare and reality. As the father decays, the setting expands and the space empties, leaving him with his solitude, his own nothingness and his impending end.