Theater - The Silence of the Sea

A Cornelian tragedy blending resistance, love, and humanism.

Winter 1940: France has been defeated. An elderly man and his niece find that part of their home has been requisitioned to house a German officer. They decide to act as if he doesn’t exist. During their evenings together, the German officer tries to strike up a conversation. Long monologues about the love between peoples, cooperation, and admiration for French culture flow from this refined and cultured man, a musician by profession. Unaware of the true nature of the Nazi occupation, he believes in the future of a unified Europe and the union of France and Germany. Only silence answers him. But beneath the silence of the sea, the gigantic currents of human emotions surge.

The point here is not to fill the silence, but to hear it and make it blaze. Music takes over to reveal what is left unsaid. It is the overture to Wagner’s *Lohengrin* that sings of the heart-wrenching contradiction of German Romanticism. It is the music of Fauré and Schubert that modestly expresses the beauty of the two cultures pitted against one another in this war. It is Duparc and Baudelaire’s *Invitation au voyage* that unites poetry and music—the young woman and the officer—in a love as pure and profound as it is impossible.

In this living room where the fireplace crackles, the audience is caught between two fires. Everything the officer represents is shameful, yet who he truly is is something entirely different. A man we listen to, whom we love to listen to—and whom we hate to love listening to.

Cast:
Written by: Vercors
Directed by: Grégoire Béranger
Musical Director: François Bernard
Actor: Laurent Chouteau
Clarinet: Damien Schulteiss
Marimba: Denis Kracht
Cello: Pernette Boutte
Company: Halte
© ello vidéo