ABSTRACT
In the mid 1980s, Mnouchkine integrated the French philosopher and writer, Hélène Cixous, into the company. This chapter deals with (and illustrates photographically) the two epic productions Cixous wrote for the Soleil in the late 1980s: The Terrible and Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia (L’histoire terrible et inachevée de Norodom Sihanouk, roi de Cambodge, 1985) and The Indiad or India of Their Dreams (l’Indiade ou l’Inde de leurs rêves, 1987). Both productions interrogate social and political conditions of the contemporary world through the story of an Asian country meant to be seen as a metaphor for the human condition. Sihanouk thus shows how big ideological and military powers take smaller countries (here, Cambodia) and their people hostage, plunging them into ghastly wars. The Indiad, through the assassination of Gandhi and the fight between Nehru and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, speaks of the many terrible separations and absurd civil wars of the 20th-century, wars in which brothers kill brothers. The discussion touches upon how Cixous’s texts get rewritten according to what happens in rehearsals, and speaks to the 2013 restaging of Sihanouk by Cambodian theatre students, who produced a shortened version of Cixous’s text using Mnouchkine’s staging.
