L'Enfant - de Jules Vallès- Mont st Jean

Compagnie des Gens.

First staged in 1997 and performed more than 150 times since its premiere, *L’Enfant* has enjoyed great popular success throughout France and Egypt. Three decades later, Jacques Senelet has decided to take to the road once more with an intimate version of this play, now presented in a format closer to that of a folktale, without sets or artificiality, in direct contact with the audience.

An autobiographical novel by Jules Vallès dedicated ‘…to all those who were bored to death at school, who were bullied by their teachers or beaten by their parents…’ *L’Enfant* is the first instalment of his trilogy, which would later include *Le Bachelier* and *L’Insurgé*. A maverick, a rebel, an insurgent, a shatterer of idols and taboos, hated by many of his contemporaries for his unwavering commitment to the oppressed and condemned to exile because of his involvement in the Commune, Jules Vallès is now recognised for his genius, and there are those who revere him with gratitude and camaraderie. I am one of them. This long companionship, this bond – I dare not say this friendship – with Jacques Vingtras has enabled me to bring his words to a wide range of audiences – schoolchildren, rural, urban, foreign, young, old… in a variety of staging contexts and in venues as diverse as theatres, the very barn where Vallès used to play as a child on the Mézenc plateau, and the distinctive Egyptian atmosphere of Port Said, Alexandria and Cairo…

Whilst, one hundred and fifty years after its publication, Jules Vallès’s fictionalised autobiography has lost none of its appeal or evocative power, it is still necessary to bring it to the attention of today’s ‘people’, to get out into the field, to recount in all simplicity the tragicomic exploits of this lad struggling against the petty world of nineteenth-century France, suffocating under social conventions – of this raw, wounded lad who picks at his wounds with derision, sometimes with a relish bordering on masochism, yet also with profound tenderness and razor-sharp humour.

It is in these moments of connection with the audience that one realises the universal nature of the text; everyone can identify with the young Vingtras, feel and share his sorrows, his rage, his fleeting joys, and his rebellion too.

Jacques Senelet wishes to convey his admiration for this work as closely as possible to the public, without any material, logistical or financial obstacles preventing its realisation.

A collection will be taken at the end of the performance, with the proceeds going directly to the artist without any other form of remuneration, so that everyone can contribute as much as they are able.