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Flea Guide FINAL
Flea Guide FINAL
A
FLEA
IN
A Flea In Her Ear. PHOTO BY CRAIG SCHWARTZ.
HER
EAR
A NEW VERSION OF
GEORGES FEYDEAUS FARCE
BY DAVID IVES
SEPTEMBER 6 NOVEMBER 22, 2015
DIRECTOR OF EDUCATION
Character Map
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RAYMONDE CHANDEBISE:
Victor Emmanuels wife. She
is considering having an affair
with Romain Tournel, but is
jealous when she suspects
that her husband is having
an affair of his own.
ROMAIN TOURNEL:
LUCIENNE HOMNIDS DE
HISTANGUA: The long-time
best friend of Raymonde and the
wife of Don Carlos. She suggests
that Raymonde trick her husband
to catch him red-handed.
CAMILLE: Victor
Emmanuels nephew,
whose cleft palate makes
him unable to pronounce
consonants and causes many
miscommunications.
Dr. Finache provides him with
a prosthetic palate to fix this
impediment, which Camille
promptly loses.
TIENNE: Victor
Emmanuels inquisitive
manservant and
Antoinettes husband.
FERRAILLON:
The militaristic
manager of the
Frisky Puss Hotel.
OLYMPIA:
Ferraillons wife, a
former prostitute.
IT IS 1950's PARIS.
The lovely Raymonde
Chandebise, after
years of wedded
bliss, begins to
doubt the fidelity of
her husband, Victor
Emmanuel, who suddenly has become sexually inactive.
Or, as Raymonde puts it, after having been a husband
and what a husband!suddenly stoppedlike that!
Between one day and the next. She does not realize,
however, that his behavior is due to a nervous condition,
and she begins to suspect that he has a mistress.
She confides her doubts to her old friend Lucienne, who
suggests a little trick to test Victor. They write him a letter,
in Luciennes handwriting, from a fictitious and anonymous
admirer, requesting a rendezvous at the Frisky Puss Hotel,
an establishment with a dubious reputation, but a large
and prominent clientele. It is Raymondes intention to
confront her husband there, and she and Lucienne leave
to do so.
When Victor Emmanuel receives the letter, however, he
has no interest in such an affair. He believes the invitation
is from the mysterious woman was meant for his best
friend Tournel, a handsome bachelorwho, unknown
to Victor Emmanuel, has his eye on Raymonde. Tournel,
hot-blooded and easily excited, quickly exits to make the
appointment.
Meanwhile, Camille, the young nephew of Victor Emmanuel,
is overjoyed to have his speech impediment corrected by a
new silver palate from Dr. Finache. In celebration, he and
the household cook, Antoinette, also hurry to the Frisky
Puss Hotel, followed by tienne, the jealous husband
of Antoinette. Dr. Finache, also looking for a bit of fun,
decides to go to the hotel in search of his own afternoon
rendezvous.
To complicate the matter further, Victor Emmanuel, with
the intention of sharing his amusement, shows the letter to
The cast of A Flea in Her Ear at The Old Vic Theatre. Photo: Alastair Muir
Q: W
hat challenges did you face in directing A Flea in
Her Ear?
Q: W
hat inspired you to place the design and aesthetic
of the play in the 1950s?
A: W
hat is more challenging than doing classic French
farce? It is linguistically complicated and has to be
played with precision & breakneck speed (an athletic
event). For it to work actors must bring humanity to
the characters. Often in farce the character are less
important than the plot, but for it to be successful and
satisfying for an audience we have to be able to relate
to the individuals.
A: W
hat drove the design was this wonderful new
translation by David Ives that breathes new life into
the piece. I loved the modernity of it and wanted to
make the play more accessible to a modern audience
while respecting the spirit of it. I wanted to get
it out of the drawing room into a much more chic
environmentout of the Middle class Belle Epoque
world and into that of the upper class trend setting
city dwellers. I hoped this would make it more
emotionally available to us. With the design team
we landed on the 1950s because it is still very much
a period with clearly defined gender roles and yet
it contained a certain navet that makes the Frisky
Pus Hotel work: The first issue of Playboy magazine
in 1953, the start of jet travel, Dior bringing Paris
back to the lead of high fashion in 1955, Miss Clairol
launching a campaign where it is okay for housewives
and mothers to color their hair in 1956. But the 1950s
are also a time when couples therapy is still in its
infancy and couples struggle with intimacy. Divorce
was uncommon and still a huge stigma. The sexual
revolution would not be realized for another decade.
Q: H
ow did you make these characters important and
believable to the audience within such a demanding
plot?
A: F
lea is brilliantly crafted. Feydeau takes a small,
insignificant misunderstanding and turns it aon its
head to create a deliciously chaotic situation. And
yet, the play is very human. Its all about relationships.
So much is at stake in the relationships in the play.
Communication or lack thereof is a central theme. If
Raymonde and Victor Emmanuel could only talk to
each other their troubles would disappear, but they
are too scared to do this. Raymonde and Lucienne are
a Lucy and Ethel of sorts. They set the play in motion
and are women who, like Lucy, will not be pushed
around and take matters into their own hands. All the
central characters in Flea are at their most vulnerable.
Issues of impotence and fidelity are difficult at any
time but especially during a period where these things
were not discussed.
Q: H
ow does the design mimic this tension between the
cultural norms and burgeoning personal freedoms
present in both the 1950s and the play?
A: In terms of architecture we created a chic symmetry
with the interiors of the Chandebise household.
They live in the center of Paris amongst well-heeled
professionals in a district surrounded by galleries,
antique dealers, bookstores and restaurants. And
when we get to the Act 2 location we find ourselves in
a seedy curved nightmare.
Among his 60 plays, his most famous are A Flea in Her Ear (1907), Le
Systme Ribadier (1892), The Girl from Maxims (1899), and Hortense
says, I dont give a damn! (1916).
Though critics at the time dismissed Feydeaus works as light
entertainment, he is now recognized as one of the great French
playwrights of his era. His plays are seen today as precursors to
Surrealist and Dada theatre, and the Theatre of the Absurd. They have
been continuously revived and are still performed today.
Despite being a phenomenally successful playwright during his
lifetime, his propensity for high living, gambling, and the failure of his
marriage led to financial difficulties.
During the winter of 1918, Feydeau contracted syphilis and slowly
descended into madness to his death three years later at age 58. He
is buried in Cimetire de Montmartre in Paris.
EDITED FROM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Feydeau
1862: Georges
Feydeau is born on
December 8 in the
Paris suburb of RueilMalmaison
1862: Victor Hugo
publishes Les Misrables
1870: France abolishes the
monarchy; installs the Third
Republic
1870: Franco-Prussian War
1871: The Paris Commune
1871: Start of the Belle poque
1873: Death of Napolon III
1873: glantine dAmboise
1876: Georges Bizets Carmen first performedto
unfavorable reviews
1876: Pierre-Auguste Renoir paints Bal du moulin de la
Galette
1877: The first modern department store, the Bon
March in Paris, has 1,100 employees and passes 72
million francs in annual sales
1878: The first electric street lights
in Paris illuminate the Avenue de
lOpra
1883: Amour et Piano
1884: France legalizes divorce
1885: Louis Pasteur develops
his vaccine against rabies
1885: mile Zola publishes
Germinale
1886: Tailleur pour dames
1886: First performance of Camille Saint-Sanss Organ
Symphony
1888: Chat en poche
1889: The Universal Exposition in Paris; opening of the
Eiffel Tower
1889: Marries Marianne Carolus-Duran; they have four
children
1890: Claude Debussy composes Claire de Lune
1892: Where Theres a Will [Le Systme Ribadier]
1894: Cat Among the Pigeons [ Unfil la patte]
1894: The Ribbon [Le Ruban]
1894: General Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason and
exiled to Devils Island
COMMUNICATION
Communication is thwarted throughout the play.
Especially in the second and third acts, characters talk
with one person, thinking theyre addressing someone
else.
Camille, who tries to issue warnings (and thus clear
up several misunderstandings) cannot be understood
due to a speech impediment that leaves him unable to
pronounce consonants. His silver palate, with its symbolic
connotations, makes his speech understandable; but
when it finally turns up, he promptly loses it, only to have
it restored in the plays final scene.
Communication within the couples poses problems, even
some that other characters see. When he learns about
the knock knock knock, Dr. Finache advises Chandebise
1 0 A Noise Within 2015/16 Repertory Season
TIMING
Much of the delight in watching A Flea in Her Ear rests
on its timing. Characters enter and exit with a frequency
and rapidity rarely seen outside of Warner Bros. cartoons.
Indeed Feydeau worked out the staging much as
engineers build bridges. Each door slam, button push,
bed rotation, slap, punch, and kiss must come within one
second of its planned time or another will override it, and
the audience will be lost. Characters must just miss each
other repeatedly, and so closely that they might have
should havemet.
The play is about timing in real life as wellabout the
need to consider the right time to do things, how much
time to take to do them, and the consequences of bad
timing.
HUMAN FOIBLES
French philosopher Henri Bergson proposed and
defended the idea that the purpose of laughter is to
correct. Feydeau crowds A Flea in Her Ear with human
foibles needing correction. Characters are selfish, selfcentered, foolish, blind, arrogant, and deceitful. In many
contemporary novels like Hugos Les Misrables, and
Zolas Germinal, the characters are fighting against
deprivation and injustice imposed from outside, by
nature or society, more than against themselves. But in
Feydeaus farce the characters, in Pogos words, have
met the enemy and he is us. They all risk being undone
not by others but by their own foibles and follies.
The cast of A Flea in Her Ear at The Old Vic Theatre. Photo: Alastair Muir
timeless.
The comedic plot
of A Flea in Her
Ear is founded
essentially on
the mistaken
identity that
arises because
of the extreme
resemblance between Victor
Emmanuel Chandebise and Poche. The spectators,
aware that its two people who have nothing to do with
each other, always understand more than the characters
on stage do. The audience knows why its useless for
Raymonde, Tournel, and Camille to try to justify their
actions to Poche, and it understands that Chandebise is
not the hotel bell boy. The added comic technique of the
turning bed that surprises the characters on stage, leads
to laughs from the audience that understands the secret.
An enormous part of Feydeaus genius lies in the
masterful intricacy of his staging. A Flea in Her Ear has
a staggering 274 entrances and exits, most of which
have to be made with split-second timing. Much of the
laughter depends on that timing. One critic has said that
the director has to find a visual and physical equivalent
for a kind of mania, mathematical in its precision: or total
chaos in the grip of an iron vice.
Feydeau manages the dialogue as brilliantly as he does
the intricate stage mechanics of the playthe twists of
language, the puns, the bawdiness that never becomes
vulgar. The comic technique of absurdity that Feydeau
shares with his London contemporary Oscar Wilde, rises
repeatedly (She poisoned herself with a bowl of clams.
But if youre going to kill yourself, you dont do it with
clams. The chances are too random.). And David Ives in
this new version multiplies the comedy in the language,
adding comic repetition (a woman was devouring
me with her eyes. Did you notice a woman devouring
me with her eyes?) and a sort of metatheatrical humor
(With any talent youll be doing Feydeau at the Comdie
Franaise ).
With all that word play, breakneck exchanges of dialogue,
and violent physical action, we can understand how this
play once called archaic has become one of the most
performed farces in theater history.
La Belle poque
THE PERIOD FROM 18901914 is
now known as La Belle poque. It was
a time of relative peace and stability
in Western Europe.
Technological advances altered
everyday life in France and
throughout much of Europe. Railways
had connected most major cities.
Transport changed forever when
Peugeot rolled its first cars in 1891,
and the Paris Mtro opened in
1910. Advanced developments in
electricity brought electric lighting
and heating into homes to compete
with gas. Communication took on
new dimensions with the invention of
pneumatic tubes, telephones, telegrams and typewriters.
The dirigible became a part of air transport, and France
initiated the worlds first air force.
Paris became Europes art capital. Art Nouveau, with its
curved forms, stands out as the movement most typical
of the period and is still the style most associated with
Paris, both in new forms like the poster and traditional
areas like architecture. The door at 29 avenue Rapp
stands as a monument to the style. (An apartment in the
building was recently for salefor well over $3 million.)
The highlight of the entrance to the Worlds Fair of
1889, Gustave Eiffels new tower, brought protest from
some of the countrys leading artists and architects,
who denounced it as a useless and monstrous and
worried that it would dominate Paris like a gigantic
black smokestackfor twenty years. In 1894 the
Galleries Lafayette opened and may still be the worlds
most dramatic department store. Style and fashion took
on a new, important role, and Parisian couturiers began
introducing new lines each season.
Artists associated with Paris during the period include
painters Claude Monet, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse,
Henri Rousseau, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the sculptor
August Rodin, and the about to be discovered Picasso.
In music, the operetta reached its height in works by
Johann Strauss III and Franz Lehr. Many Belle poque
composers working in Paris are still widely performed
today: Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Claude Debussy, Jules
Massenet, Gabriel Faur, and Camille Saint-Sans and
his pupil, Maurice Ravel. Literature was rich in naturalist
and realist works, led by mile Zolas Germinal and Nana,
1 5 A Noise Within 2015/16 Repertory Season
ESSAY QUESTIONS
1. T
he play uses the comedic device of mistaken
identity. Can you think of any other plays, movies,
etc. that rely on this comedic device? Is it always
funny? Why or why not?
2. H
ow does Feydeau use the theme of deception?
What does this say about human nature?
3. D
iscuss how the play contrasts the bourgeois
world of the Chandebise residence and the world
of the Hotel Minet Galant. How does this create a
divide between the characters? How is this theme
relevant today?
4. T
ake note of the pace of the play; how does this
add to comedy? What does it take as an actor to
keep the story fast paced and engaging? What
role does ensemble play in creating a successful
comedy?
IN CLASS ACTIVITIES
STATUS QUO:
Engage the student actors in a conversation
regarding status. What does this term mean in
life (at school, at home or in the wider community)?
What does it mean on stage (between characters
or between actors and the audience)?Discuss how
status can affect the body language, the voice,
dialogue and the overall truthful portrayal of a
character.
S
plit the class in half. One set of student actors
becomes the audience and the other half sit in
chairs that are set up in a line SL to SR across the
stage or teaching area. The facilitator places a
playing card on the forehead of each participant
(with a small piece of double sided tape) without
the participant seeing what card it is.
Instruct the actors that an ace is the highest
status in the room and two is the lowest. When
the facilitator claps his/her hands, the actors are
to mill around the room as if they are at a social
engagement, meeting new people for the first
time. They are to treat the other people at the
party according to the status (card ranking) on
their forehead. They are to quickly adapt their
character by responding to the cues given to
them by their fellow actors.
T
he first round is silent and entirely delivered
through body language and facial expression.
Freeze.
C
lap again and the second round introduces
improvised dialogue. Freeze again.
T
he actors sit back down in their seats and are
asked to sit SL to SR from low to high status,
having to guess what external status they have
been given. One at a time, actors remove their
cards and discuss if their predictions were correct,
how they guessed their status, how they were
treated and how it felt.
L
arge class discussion and the groups switch. The
entire activity is repeated for the new group.
A
ssessment is in the form of reflection and in
class discussion.
OBSERVATION:
SOURCE: childdrama.com
LIFEBOAT SURVIVOR
A group of ten people floats through the ocean on
a lifeboat that is barely large enough to save them.
In fact, it cannot hold one more person. Suddenly, a
head bobs up though the waves: another shipwreck
survivor begging for their help. Another life can only
be saved if one person leaves the lifeboat.
DRAW THESE SUGGESTED
CHARACTERS OUT OF A HAT:
Doctor, Mother, Father, Small Child, Athlete, Artist,
Activist, Survival Expert, Lawyer, Teacher, Bus Driver,
Religious Leader, Elderly Person, Boat Captain,
Engineer, Biologist, [Feel free to make up more of
your own!]
ARTICLES:
BOOKS:
reviews/2357/
WEBSITES:
http://stageagent.com/shows/play/2123/a-flea-in-herear
http://www.uakron.edu/dotAsset/2776a2a4-f26e45e0-9764-0043d420a912.pdf
http://www.bard.org/about-the-playwright-a-flea-inher-ear/
http://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/playwrights/
georges-feydeau-iid-12397
FILMS:
A Flea in Her Ear Dir. Jacques Charon. With Rex
Harrison, Rosemary Harris, and Louis Jourdan.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 1968.
Study Guides
A Noise Within creates study guides in
alignment with core reading, listening,
speaking, and performing arts standards
to help educators prepare their students
for their visit to our theatre. Study guides
are available at no extra cost to download
through our website: www.anoisewithin.
org. The information and activities outlined
in these guides are designed to work
in compliance with the California VAPA
standards, The Common Core, and
21st Century Learning Skills.
Study guides include background
information on the plays and playwrights,
historical context, textual analysis, in-depth
discussion of A Noise Withins artistic
interpretation of the work, statements
from directors and designers, as well as
discussion points and suggested classroom
activities. Guides from past seasons are
also available to download from the
website.