"L'illusion Comique" by Pierre Corneille

On Thursday, April 28 & Friday, April 29, l’Atelier d’Art Dramatique of Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles, (10th, 11th and 12th grade students) will perform L’Illusion comique, by Pierre Corneille, a Baroque drama built on several levels of illusion, offering an effective apology of the theater. The play is seen as one of Corneille’s most innovative and remarkable production.

A classic from French Theatre!

The play directed by Pierre Leloup will be perform in French with NO subtitles.

Corneille’s first eight plays, all but one of them comedies, combine obvious influences from contemporary drama with the playwright’s search for greater independence. The most remarkable of his early plays is L’Illusion comique, which Corneille in 1660 called a “strange monster.” It is clear that he wrote the play without the slightest regard for the dramatic unities then being promulgated by literary theorists. Called a Baroque drama because of its emphasis on illusion, instability, and metamorphosis, the play is the culmination of Corneille’s early period and contains an effective apology of the theater, and, perhaps, of the career that Corneille had chosen for himself.