Drama a la de Sade

The French Cultural Center in Ukraine presented its new director to the public. Marc Sagnol, the Head of the Ukrainian branch of FCC for the last four years, has been replaced by Beno i ц t Vitse who arrived in Ukraine from Romania. By calling Mr. Vitse is a theater director (this spring he brought to Kiev his small amateur team for a competition of French-speaking theaters). It is not accident that the theatrical person Beno i ц t Vitse started his activity in Ukraine with the exhibition-presentation, The Authors of Contemporary French Theater, that presented information on 35 dramatists of the last twenty years. However, in the opinion of Mr. Vitse, even such a detailed exposition can be hardly considered exhaustive. Moreover, it presents not only the achievements but also the difficulties currently afflicting French dramaturgy: the hypnotic influence of the Marquis de Sade on all the contemporary French culture, which is revealed extremely vividly in the visual arts.

The exposition presents a large panel that contains the photos from performances, biographic data and the extracts from the most famous plays of such dramatists as Copi, Gabily, Kolt О s, Lagarce, Caub О re, Cixous, Durringer, and entirely young authors who so far havenot got a single staged work. In Benoi ц t Vitse’s words, the FCC will be happy to present these texts to Ukrainian theater directors. Incidentally, the FCC brings to Kyiv in November the play Pockets Full of Paraphernalia by Mateo Visniec, one of the dramatists presented at the exhibition. It will be performed by the Fronde Theater on the stage of Kyiv’s Young Theater of the capital. The capital also expects the arrival of the author himself who is today one of the most famous dramatists in France.