À la recherche de la Recherche Jean-Jacques Vanier

In Search of the Search

or let the great Proust sketch me

Jean-Jacques Vanier

Reading *In Search of Lost Time* has never been a challenge for Jean-Jacques Vanier, any more than climbing Everest. Yet, when his drama teacher once declared that ‘The most beautiful of journeys is the inner journey, and its finest guide is *In Search of Lost Time*’, those words resonated in his mind.

It would take him a few years for the idea to take root: to read *In Search of Lost Time*, to delve back into his own childhood through that of

Marcel Proust, and then to draw the audience into his own memories, his own school playground.

And then to finally attempt to shed light on this question: why, oh why, did Marcel go to bed early for so long?

A question that Jean-Jacques Vanier sets out to answer in a humorous tribute to Proust’s lovers and victims alike, to schoolteachers, bus drivers, our dear grannies and the ‘Jeu des Mille Francs’ game.

text and performance by Jean-Jacques Vanier