Legarce’s Rules for Good Manners in the Modern World is a funny, relevant and subversive play in both its form and content. As such, it ignites challenges to the paper states of consciousness held forth in life and the theatre.
This is the paradox to explore: the celebration of life through social order and good behavior, while exposing the doubt and ambiguity that are curtained by strict conventions. It is perfect material for theatre.
Our modern consumer world yearns for a set of very specific rules, since life itself is not lived but consumed. This world needs an instruction manual, a how-to book, a "life for dummies" sort of a thing. Lagarce's heroine, the perfumed priestess of good manners and social regulations, presents us one such treasure, and not without delicate cruelty.
Although written in monologue, the play provides abundant landscape for broader mise-en-scene. The atmosphere of an event - not necessarily the lecture - is at the core of Lagarce's idea. The potential to transform narrated ceremonies of birth, wedding, and burial into an exciting set of scenes with perhaps several actors, will be my springboard for staging Rules. . .