Fahrenheit 451 In Theatres around France

If you are studying Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 with your LLCER 1ère students, you may want to take them to see this theatre adaptation in French which will be touring the country from January.

Bradbury's dystopian novel about a future world in which firemen don't put out fires but instead burn books is a new addition to the set texts list this year.

Théâtre Amer’s adaptation by director Mathieu Coblentz was first presented in Villeurbanne in 2021 and has already toured extensively. The new tour dates will begin at the end of January in Bayeux:

28 January 2024, La Halle ô Grains, Bayeux (14) ;
30 January 2024, Théâtre Juliobona, Lillebonne (76) ;
1-2 February 2024, Théâtre du Pays, Morlaix (29) ;
3 April 2024, Théâtre, Coutances (50) ;
5 April 2024, Centre culturel Athéna d’Auray (56) ;
11 April 2024, Canal, Redon (35).

Like many film and theatre adaptations of the novel, including Bradbury’s own theatre adaptation, the production puts more focus on the hope represented by the Book People who embody works of literature to save them from being destroyed, than on book burning. In fact, the company decided not to use fire and flames at all in their production. They prefer the symbolism of thousands of pages from books which invade the stage and which audience members often take away with them.

Coblentz had read that, as a child, Bradbury listened to an adventure series on the radio every evening, Chandu the Magician. He used the show to train himself as a writer. “Every night when the program went off the air, I would sit down and write it from memory, so I trained myself as a writer from the age of twelve by writing radio scripts.” Coblentz took the idea of memorising and recording and imagined that the Book People were trying to record the books they embodied in a recording studio.