Staging Dom Juan: How Contemporary Performance Practices Play with the Player

Abstract:This article examines how four twenty-first-century productions of Molière's Le Festin de Pierre play with its infamous protagonist, Dom Juan. After exploring the historical context in which the play was written and performed in 1665, including its nearly immediate censorship by royal authorities, the study analyzes each contemporary production in turn, highlighting the common themes among them, sexual violence and obsession, which align with the prevailing conceptions of the archetype perpetuated by different authors before and since Molière's version. The article concludes with an investigation of how these replays deemphasize the aspects of Molière's play that question faith and religion, commercial enterprise, and the split between moral and economic values.