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MOLIÈRE Jean Baptiste-Poquelin, aka Molière (1622-1673), already famous for the scandal caused by his previous play Tartuffe (1664) wrote his tragicomedy Don Juan in 1665. Since Tartuffe was banned immediately after the premiere and he did not have another ready play, Molière had to improvise a comedy overnight and thus bring the audience backto his theatre. He picked up for his subject the legend about Don Juan which was popular at the time. In doing so he openly draws on the already existing plays about this legendary hero, such as El burlador de Sevilla (The Seducer of Seville, 1630) by Tirso de Molina or II convitato di piedra (The Stone Guest, 1650) by Cicognini. Molière takes over the fashionable Don Juan myth and keeps the fantastic coming to life of Commander's statue in the end in order to endeavours to satisfy the taste of the public with a spectacular theatrical deus ex machina effect. The play premiered on 15 February 1665 on the stage of Palais Royal Theatre and met with great success, but was taken off the repertory after mere fifteen runs, even if without an official ban, at the request of the practising believers who, after Tartuffe, once again felt provoked, in particular by the fifth act in which Molière vehemently attacks spurious faith and hypocrisy. Don Juan was not staged again in Molière's lifetime and in France its integral version was performed only in 1813. Of all Molière's plays this is the only one that remained unpublished while he was alive. No other dramatic character fascinates the spectators and readers as this complex mythic hero, invariably offering the opportunity for new interpretations. In Don Juan as in his whole opus, Molière unmasks deep sins, with no possibility of penance, of a corrupt and corrupting society in which lies, hypocrisy, blasphemy and desecration are common phenomena. Donjuán is thus a brilliant diatribe against spurious faith, hypocrisy and machinations of the potentates. Moreover, the forcefulness of Molière's theatre does not rest only with the quality of his goal: is the satire about obsessive and deeply buried human concerns; there is also the inherent dramatic nature of his writing because Molière is, above all, a man of the theatre. The genius of Don Juan's author is also reflected in the alternating comic and tragic note in a play whose "irregularity" and a game it makes of genres undermine the dogmas of the 17th century classicistic theatre. This constitutive and genre ambivalence explains lasting debates about Molière's perception of his cult dramatic character Don Juan. In Donjuán Moliere shows the problem whilst keeping the contradictions and tensions it produces, intertwining different views and thus creates an ageless work. By placing the comical people's representative Sganarelle right next to the character of Don Juan, Molière creates a multilayered dialogue drama resisting simple interpretation. Particularly ambivalent is the end of Molière 's Don Juan when the appearance of the Commander's statue who should take the sinner to Hell, is overshadowed by Don Juan's conversion and his embrace of the general hypocrisy. Don Juan, a comedy written in two ticks, is still one of the most frequently staged works of the French dramatic literature, and Molière is one of the most frequently produced French playwrights. Prepared by Despina Angelovska, dramaturgist THE JOURNEY CALLED DON JUAN Interview with Aleksandar Popovski, director What did Don Juan mean to you before and what does it mean now, after you've worked on its staging? Has what you had known before about Don Juan, coincided with what you discovered in the course of the Journey through the Don-Juanic labyrinths or with what you're still discovering, retrospectively? Journey. It's a play about a man that journeys. And as you travel things, landscapes, people around you change, undergo transformations. That was the agreement we had, Nikola Ristanovski and I. Don Juan will be changing. Constantly, from one scene to another, from one act to the next. We are not going to present only one character, we are going to play all our characters and faces. What I had known in the beginning, and what I was discovering during the process, told me a lot about what I am. About what was happening around me. It's been a while since I've dug so deep, and if you want my truthful answer, I could have gone to even greater depths, primarily thanks to the actors I was working with. I cannot find the words to describe the ease with which the actors would embark on improvisations and explorations of the scenes.