This new adventure began with a proposal made to me by the Théâtre de la Commune d'Aubervilliers to organize readings of some of Jean-Luc Lagarce's plays in conjunction with the return season of Le Voyage à La Haye (The Trip to The Hague) and based on the theatre's theme of the season: "It's better than nothing, or, some questions about happiness". The obvious choice was Jean-Luc's play Les Règles du savoir vivre dans la société moderne (Rules for Living in Modern Society), which explains what to do, from birth to death, for everything to go well in life. Especially considering that Jean-Luc wrote this play at the same time as Le Voyage à La Haye.
And of course I also thought of the pleasure I would have hearing Les Règles du savoir vivre spoken by Mireille Herbstmeyer.
For a reading, Mireille was not going to re-learn the role she had played in a production by Jean-Luc, five years ago now, we would start again from scratch. And, in the course of our conversations, we found ourselves telling a new story, creating a new life for our dear "Baroness" (that's what we call her among ourselves), so we decided to mount a new production. Also because I had not succeeded in mounting the production of the play I had wanted for 2000.
So, when you cannot put on a show, the only solution is to put one on ...

Why a totally new production of this play?

This question may appear crazy but has been asked, I suppose, because I worked with Jean-Luc Lagarce and was indeed his assistant on this play with Mireille Herbstmeyer.

So I will state a few obvious facts:

That, by definition, a script is written to be staged and that it's good to be able to present it more than once.
That, in addition, I work with an association which promotes the idea that any one production does not tell the full story of a script.
That I've been working with Mireille Herbstmeyer for twenty years now and that her talent cannot be confined to a single performance.
That I am currently working on a play called Notes de cuisine by Rodrigo Garcia and that Les Règles du Savoir Vivre... deals almost exclusively with the meals to be organised for all the different circumstances of life.
That this character forms part of our memories, and of those of the audiences who have already encountered her, but we have all grown older, new children have been born, others have got married, some have left us and it's good to remember, and to teach those who don't know, that this is "how nothing ever stops going on".

That these few reasons are not exhaustive, there must be other secret reasons which, by definition, will remain so.