Jean-Paul Wenzel

Three penniless artists become friends in modern-day Paris: Rodolfo, an Albanian painter with no visa, Marcel, a playwright and magazine editor with no publisher, and Schaunard, a post-modernist composer of execrable noise.

A character, directly addressing the viewer, attempts, through his or her knowledge, a historical reflection on the Paris Commune of 1871. A series of five tableaux retraces the major phases of the events. First comes the analysis of the Second Empire. Then comes the fall of the Empire and the proclamation of the Republic on September 4, 1870. Based on texts by Jules Vallès, several actors evoke the event in the contemporary setting of the large housing estates of Bobigny. The third part deals with the period October-March 1871, during which the people of Paris felt, little by little, betrayed by the government. Finally, March 18 is the revolutionary day. Inspired by Bertold Brecht's "Days of the Commune," actors perform the episode "Madame Cabet's Canon." The fifth part, entitled "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," directly evokes the work of the Commune, building and imagining a better world...

Gabrielle, a pleasant woman in her sixties, learns that she is about to be evicted from her second-hand shop...

Gaspard is a brilliant pupil who makes a clean sweep of all the prizes every year. He despises his family, and do not want to remain a crude peasant like them. Two businessmen, Mister Fereor and Mister Frolichein, want him to work in their factories. The former wins the contest. Gaspard is a young Turk who wants to make his way of life at any cost. He steals ideas from other young men and becomes an occasional informer. He wins his boss over and, as this tycoon has no son, he is adopted by him even though his biological parents are still alive. But unfair competition threatens Fereor's business and Gaspard is forced to marry Frolichein's daughter, Mina.