On one occasion, a man named Charles Swann visits his parents. He vividly remembers his dreams, as well as his thoughts immediately before falling asleep and immediately after waking up. Each item and each part of the room makes him feel a distinct emotion. Each goodnight kiss is welcomed but also a dreadful reminder of the impending darkness. In scenes from his childhood, he tries to tempt his mother into his bedroom in a bid for her attention. Ever since he was a child, he has suffered from insomnia. The rush of memories prompted by the smell and taste makes the narrator think about his life. The narrator Marcel loses himself in memories after dipping a madeleine (a small butter cake) in a cup of hot tea. The first involves the narrator’s younger self. All parts of the Proust-cycle are completed stories and can be seen separately.Swann’s Way tells two stories in a stream-of-consciousness manner.

“Proust 1: Swann’s Way”, “Proust 2: Albertine’s Way”, “Proust 3: Charlus’ Way” and “Proust 4: Marcel’s Way” have garnered both critical and public acclaim. The inner world created on stage contains a continual blending of past and present, and imagination and memories. In keeping with his previous stagings, Guy Cassiers works in a multimedial way here too: actors, storytelling, live music, video images and text projections represent the many layers in Proust’s rich novel. It can be called a panoramic time document for the last decades of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century, a period in which more changes took place than had done since the beginning of Christian times.įor Guy Cassiers, the central theme is ‘the functioning of the imagination’, as defined by Proust in his novel in minute detail.

“In search of lost time” is the story of the initiation of a young man, Marcel, into the world of love, aristocracy and the arts. The four-part theatre cycle “In search of lost time”, based on Marcel Proust’s masterpiece is a grand and multifaceted project: the director Guy Cassiers has been working on this project for three seasons at the ro theatre. Swann and Odette’s story is a model for the development of many other Proustian histories of love. In contrast there is the story of the history of adult love between Swann and Odette: a great passion that changes into jealous agony and ends in indifference. The three women represent consecutive stages of sexuality in young Marcel. The first episode tells the story of young Marcel’s life in Combray and his relationship with three women in his youth: his mother, his childhood sweetheart, Gilberte, and Odette Swann, Gilberte’s mother and Charles Swann’s wife.

Marcel proust swann