Don Juan

“I like the idea of a character who is looking for Woman, through women. Unless he is looking for himself ? He should reasonably stop one day, and should fall really in love at last. But Don Juan is not reasonable. He does not respect anything or anyone”

Don Juan, for whom any woman was a target for seduction, was born in Spain during the Siglo de Oro. He has been seen as close to the Commedia dell’arte, considered as a free thinker, a melancolic womanizer, in search of absolute and barely exhausted by that literary pursuit which is so fascinating.

For Gluck and Angiolini, he is the libertine sketched by Molière. We keep these features while adding a few more recent expressiones. I like the idea of a character who is looking for Woman, through women. Unless he is looking for himself ? He should reasonably stop one day, and should fall really in love at last. But Don Juan is not reasonable. He does not respect anything or anyone and is blasphemous. To me, he is a mystic who nistead of finding fulfillment in the ecstasy of what is unique and stable, has to keep running to enjoy multiplicity. He is a man of action, feeding exclusively on the moments he spends next to someone else’s body.

That is how he gets to know plenitude for a moment, beyond the object of his desire. Sensuality is for him the way to know eternity and it might only reside within himself : however, he does not stop to find out about it. He goes on until the Commander extends his hand to invite him to the kingdom of the Death. Might everything stop in an ecstatic rest, then ?

Thierry Malandain