''The Satin Slipper'' (''Le Soulier de satin'') is a long play by the French dramatist and poet
Paul Claudel
Paul Claudel (; 6 August 1868 – 23 February 1955) was a French poet, dramatist and diplomat, and the younger brother of the sculptor Camille Claudel. He was most famous for his verse dramas, which often convey his devout Catholicism.
Early lif ...
, written in 1929. It was first performed on stage in 1943, in a production by Claudel and
Jean-Louis Barrault
Jean-Louis Bernard Barrault (; 8 September 1910 – 22 January 1994) was a French actor, director and mime artist who worked on both screen and stage.
Biography
Barrault was born in Le Vésinet in France in 1910. His father was 'a Burgundia ...
.
Its run time is roughly eleven hours.
Nowadays it is rarely staged, because of its extreme length and its challenging production requirements. It was made into a
film in 1985 by the Portuguese director
Manoel de Oliveira
Manoel Cândido Pinto de Oliveira (; 11 December 1908 – 2 April 2015) was a Portuguese film director and screenwriter born in Cedofeita, Porto. He first began making films in 1927, when he and some friends attempted to make a film about Wo ...
.
Plot summary
The scene is set during the
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
at the time of the
conquistadors
Conquistadors (, ) or conquistadores (, ; meaning 'conquerors') were the explorer-soldiers of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires of the 15th and 16th centuries. During the Age of Discovery, conquistadors sailed beyond Europe to the Americas, O ...
. The play is a love story dominated by the ideas of sin and redemption and the various characters, some divine and some comic, frequently engage in a dialogue as though between Heaven and Earth.
Productions
Full-length productions were staged in Paris and the
Avignon Festival
The ''Festival d'Avignon'', or Avignon Festival, is an annual arts festival held in the French city of Avignon every summer in July in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes as well as in other locations of the city. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vila ...
and most recently by
Olivier Py
Olivier Py (; born 24 July 1965 in Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes) is a French stage director, actor and writer.
Career
In 1997, Py became director of the Centre dramatique national d'Orléans. In 2007, he became director of the Théâtre de l'Odéon ...
at the
Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris in 2009.
See also
*
''Le Monde'' 100 Books of the Century
References
* Edition critique : ''Le Soulier de satin'' by Paul Claudel, Antoinette Weber-Caflisch, Annales littéraires de l'Université de Besançon, n° 334, Les Belles Lettres, 1987.
External links
French plays
1929 plays
1943 plays
{{1920s-play-stub