The play begins with Colombo (Colombus) sailing the sea with his wife Anarda and their son Fernando. They meet a choir of mermaids, then of tritons, all of which are taken away by Fortuna. The ship berths at Motenzuma, the capital of Peru. Tendilla, daughter of Ginacra, the king of Peru, advocates against welcoming the foreigners. Her lover Guascarre speaks against his wife’s empty fears. Ginacra sends him to the ships to meet the strangers, who have brought presents. When the Court and the strangers meet, Colombo fears that his wife Anarda will be tempted; she assures him that she is faithful. Their son falls in love with Tendilla. The servant Giumbè is leading two camels carrying many gifts. This is followed by a dance of monkeys trying to imitate human dances. Ginacra wooes Anarda. As she rejects him, he tries to force Colombo to give his wife to him. The two husbands ask for Guascarre’s help, although he himself is jealous of Fernando. Taken to the temple to be sacrificed, Anarda accepts her coming death—to prove her love for Colombo. Trying to make her change her mind, Ginacra turns her into a goddess: faced with a renewed rejection, he takes her to prison. Colombo is set on dying for his wife. Fernando asks Tendilla to intercede with the tyrant on behalf of his mother. The interlude stages the European nations dressed in colourful costumes. At night, Anarda is waiting in her cell for her husband to save her: Colombo arrives, carrying a torch, and with Giumbè’s help manages to see Anarda. Ginacra also arrives at the prison. Anarda pretends to like him and suggests that he kills Colombo in a duel, to win her love. Colombo hears the end of the conversation, displays jealousy and tries to kill himself at his wife’s feet. She prevents him from doing so and explains her plan to fight, disguised as him. Tendilla declares her love to Fernando: as a true gentleman, Guascarre promises his rival mutual love. Colombo cross-dresses and offers to fight the duel in Ginacra’s stead: the fight now opposes Anarda cross-dressed as Colombo, and Colombo cross-dressed as the king’s champion. Hurt by Anarda, Colombo falls to the ground; When she discovers her opponent’s true identity, she faints. Learning about Anarda’s feats, Ginacra decides to leave her alone. Tendilla hesitates between her two suitors: her father decides that she will marry Guascarre, the oldest of the two.

Automaton

Not specified

Ottoboni Pietro

Italy

Rome

Printed

Peru

Geographic discoveries

Explorer

Rivalry in love

Sacrifice

Edifying

Heroic

Fantasy

Pietro Ottoboni, Il Colombo ovvero L'India scoperta, 1690.

Italian

overo L'India scoperta

Christopher Columbus

Wife

Slave

Interpreter

Young woman

King

Prince

Lady-in-waiting

Mermaid

Interlude

Chorality

Thwarted love

Love rivalry

Boat mounted on wheels

Clouds

Board meeting

Sleeping character

Night scene

Spying scene

Fall of a character

Release of a prisoner

Sword fight

Duel scene

Disguised character (false identity)

Character mistaken as a member of the other sex

Final wedding

Il Colombo

Júpiter, madly in love with Alcmena (Alcmene), sets up a stratagem imagined by Mercúrio (Mercury): while the beautiful woman laments the absence of her husband, the general Anfitriaõ (Amphitryon), who has gone to war, the god disguises himself as her husband and goes to see her. As for the servant Cornucópia, she is talking with Mercúrio, disguised as her husband Saramago. When Saramago arrives and announces his master’s return, he sees Mercúrio, disguised as him: disconcerted, he cannot guide his master when he asks him how the news was received in the house. Juno, Júpiter’s wife, decides to avenge herself for his infidelities. Calling herself Felisarda, she comes down to Alcmena’s house; Júpiter has just left. When the real Anfitriaõ returns, even Juno is fooled and believes that he is in fact her husband Júpiter. The scene also leads to a series of misunderstandings between Anfitriaõ and his wife, who believes that she saw him the day before, and between Saramago and Cornucópia, who reproaches him for his rudeness. Determined to keep the ruse going, Júpiter goes as far as deceiving the soldiers and usurps Anfitriaõ’s military victory. The nymph Iris, disguised as Corriola, attempts to find out the truth by seducing Saramago. Tirésias, in love with Juno, who is pretending to be the daughter of Anfitriaõ’s enemy, agrees to help her: they will take revenge against their husbands. The couples quarrel and reconcile: jealous when she hears the romantic conversations between Saramago and Iris, Cornucópia is forced to think about her own unfaithfulness with the other Saramago. In the meantime, Júpiter reconciles with Alcmena, who was angry with him after a quarrel about the real Anfitriaõ. Mercúrio stops Anfitriaõ from coming by refusing to recognise him: this leads to a violent struggle between the master and his “valet”; when the real Saramago arrives, he is beaten. Anfitriaõ and Saramago break through the door and force Júpiter to leave the house: Anfitriaõ comes face to face with his lookalike. The two suitors are about to kill each other, but they are interrupted by Alcmena, who faints. The scene is paralleled by a confrontation between Mercúrio and Saramago, in front of Cornucópia, who also faints and turns into a dwarf. When Saramago discovers Tirésias and Juno’s love affair, the goddess turns him into an olive tree: Mercúrio and Cornucópia knock down its fruits, then Júpiter engraves the name of his beloved on it, before giving Saramago his original body back. Júpiter meets Alcmena, who is sleeping by the fountain. He is challenged by Anfitriaõ. Mercúrio testifies on behalf of his master, against the real Anfitriaõ. The couple is in a predicament: Tirésias sentences Alcmena to death for her infidelity; doing so, he obeys Juno; Anfitriaõ is put in prison, where he beats Saramago for being the cause of his misfortune. However, the gods intervene, so that the play has a happy ending. Juno frees the prisoners; then, when Alcmena is about to be sacrificed, Júpiter reveals the truth: the stage transforms into an empyrean.

Rod and string marionette

António José Da Silva (António José da Silva, aka O Judeu)

Portugal

Lisbon

Return from the war

Double

Identity

Usurpation

Encounter

Love

Jealousy

Mock-heroic

Comical

Burlesque

Parodistic

Title page and summary of Amphitryaõ (1759)

Portuguese

ou Júpiter e Alcmena

Amphitryon

Husband

Jupiter (Jove)

Mercury

Tiresias

Captain

Servant

Alcmene

Juno

Maid

Iris

Music

Love duet

Transforming one character into another

Flying machine

Misunderstanding

Blow-with-a-stick

Fainting

Change of head on sight

Change of size on sight

Confinement

Revelation

Deus ex machina

Avista

Anfitriaõ

At the beginning of the year 2000, the elected representative and his secretary organised an evening in a municipal multi-purpose hall, where they met with the 'working classes' to ask them what their dreams were. The politician wants to redesign the local bar so that it is no longer a meeting place for 'not normal people', and hopes to direct people's dreams towards his goal. But nothing happens as he imagined: everyone talks about their dreams, but they turn out to be expressions of inner unease or personal hopes, rather than achievable wishes. By sharing fragments of their drifting lives, the citizens turn the evening into a slump of violent outbursts, which nevertheless leaves room for bursts of infinite tenderness.

Lemahieu Daniel

France

Paris

Villeneuve-lès-Avignon

Typed or electronic text with handwritten annotations

People

Poverty

Worker

Violence

Sadness

Fear

Bourgeoisie

Vaudeville

Tenderness

Wrestling

Blood

French

Social vaudeville for fifty puppets and three actors

Patron

Politician

Twins

Social worker

Bride

Vicar

Old woman

Child

Old man

Sung scenes

Inn scene

Dialect as a social marker

Dance

Splitting of the body

Song

Monologue

Silence

Fight

Gunshot

Fake death

Grammelot

Le rêve de votre vie (à vos souhaits)

The dream of your life (Bless you!)

A man named Précair has just lost his job. Sitting on a public bench, he suddenly sees a huge branch fall from a tree. Another day, in the same place, Précair's left arm falls off, then his right. To help him, a kind man takes him to an arm merchant. But as Précair has little money, he leaves the shop with two pieces of wood instead of arms. His wife Zalou leaves him. Précair, now made entirely of wood, runs after work, which constantly eludes him. Hired as a flower pot during a social cocktail party, Précair is treated like an insignificant object, then thrown out onto the street. He loses his head (which is picked up by a dog), then his speech. Précair, now with a dog's head, behaves like one and is taken in by homeless people who are victims of a slum landlord. A dog with a human head (Précair's) arrives and sniffs Précair lying on the ground. Précair stands up, regaining his human appearance. He follows the dog up a long staircase that leads him to the middle of the sky.

Young audiences

Cagnard Jean

Meung-sur-Loire

Precariousness

Unemployment

Dehumanisation

Tree

Dismembering

Homeless

Slumlord

Hunger

Absurd

Fantastic

Ironic

Chômeur

Policeman

Landlord

Parable

Silent scene

Set that comes to life

Character ejected through the door

Fall of a set element

Comical fall of a character

Fall of a body part

Throwing rubbish at a character

Scream

Rainfall on stage

A human-faced animal

Inserting poetry

Ascension

Character represented in animal form

L’Entonnoir

Funnel

The Neuf Coriaces (Nine Tenacious) are the last remaining survivors of a species that was once composed of billions of individuals. Their hunger led them to devour each other. They understand that they are responsible for the survival of their species, but are still looking for a way to choose who will be the next to be devoured. One of the Coriaces suggests that they stop eating members of the species, without success. They discover La Fragile Créature (The Delicate Creature) that one of the Coriaces keeps hidden in a box, and welcome her in their Confrérie de la Marmite (Fellowship of the Cooking Pot). After contemplating for a while, they devour her. After this last meal, they start the same conversation they had at the beginning of the play, as if they had forgotten everything that just happened.

Object theatre

Lyon

Arcueil

Survival

Cannibalism

Future

Dystopia

Darwinism

Deliberation

Philosophical tale

Black comedy

Satirical

Patrick Dubost, Les Neuf Coriaces, Collectif en 7, 2010.

Allegory

Echoing lines

Character eating another character

Les Neuf Coriaces

The Nine Tenacious

In a former espadrille factory closed for years, abandoned objects, clothes and machines come to life to evoke the forty-five years of life of the factory and its workers. Former workers, former managers, and residents who lived by the rhythm of factory life recall with emotion the hours of hard work interspersed with joy, the strike pickets and union struggles, the resistance to successive factory closures and unemployment. Among them, Jacqueline makes her eight-year-old grandson Ulysse understand the place of the factory in her life. The factory, which was closed and left abandoned for a long time, was finally dismantled and demolished. The day the building is razed to the ground, the whole landscape of the city changes, leaving a gaping void for the inhabitants. The children of the school, worried and disoriented, wonder about this disappearance. The headmaster then asks them to draw the factory as they have always seen it or as they have been told about it, so that they will not forget it. Ulysse offers his drawing to his grandmother Jacqueline to console her: it shows the factory teeming with life, as she knew it. This is how this working-class memory is passed on from one generation to the next.