Theater – *Dinner with the French* by V. Giscard d’Estaing

Following *Génération Mitterrand*, the theater company Les Animaux en Paradis returns to the stage at Le Bordeau, much to our delight, with the third installment of the theatrical series *Huit rois* (Our Presidents).

A couple of farmers from Normandy, their daughter, and their son-in-law—young parents and factory workers in Belfort—host Anne-Aymone and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing for New Year’s Eve on December 31. The dinner will last seven years, from 1974 to 1981; the play, an hour and a half. Over the course of the seven-year meal, the characters will age:
the infant will grow into a child capable of speech, the couple formed by her parents will drift apart, and the grandparents will draw closer to death. History, too, will move forward:
an economic crisis (following the two oil shocks), a social crisis (the emergence of mass unemployment), and societal upheavals (the legalization of abortion and divorce by mutual consent)… All these upheavals will take their toll on the characters. “We are therefore dreaming of a political comedy—in short, a theater of pleasure and ideas, a theater for the people.”

Cie Des Animaux en Paradis