Dear Prudence

Two men who have heard of each other but have never met, arrange to meet. It is the older of the two, they are almost the same age, who contacted the other. He introduced himself and said, ‘I need to talk to you,’ and the other replied, ‘Okay, but I have nothing to say to you.’ They meet on the street in front of the younger man’s home. They are friendly towards each other. They are also wary. They talk about a twenty-year-old boy. They talk about him with love and distance. This boy is the son of the older man, and he is also the former lover of the other man. The other man wants to be clear. He knows that this relationship was not “reasonable”, and he takes every precaution to say that he has ended it, that he has had no contact with the boy for several weeks. That he is sorry for having given in to his advances. That he should have been more careful, but that he doesn’t feel guilty about anything, that the father can’t blame him for being seduced by his son, that it was a crazy affair. But not an unworthy one. He defends himself as if in a trial that the father is not putting him on… If the father asks questions, it is not to judge but to understand. His son killed himself a few days ago. He left a letter asking his father to tell his former lover, but only after the funeral.

“Regarding practical wisdom we shall get at the truth by considering who are the persons we credit with it. Now it is thought to be the mark of a man of practical wisdom to be able to deliberate well about what is good ans expedient for himself, not in some particular respect, e.g., about what sorts of things conduce to health or to strength, but about what sorts of things conduce to the good life in general.”

Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle

Created in 2020 at La Comédie, National Drama Centre in Reims

Text by Christophe Honoré

Directed by Chloé Dabert

With Olivier Dupuy and Sébastien Eveno

Assistant director Matthieu Heydon

Artistic collaborator Marie La Rocca

Lighting design Didier Saint-Omer

Sound design Julien Matthieu

Play created as part of Lycéens citoyens, an arts and culture education programme initiated by La Colline, Théâtre National, run in partnership with Le Grand T Théâtre de Loire-Atlantique, La Comédie – Centre dramatique national de Reims and Le Théâtre National de Strasbourg, supported by Total Foundation, the Choeur à l’ouvrage endowment fund and the Paris Regional Education Authority

© Victor Tonelli