“I am the sick one!” Argante shouts to his brother Beraldo and the maid Tonina. I wondered if this might not be the desperate cry of a playwright who, while writing, feels cast aside, ridiculed by society, no longer in vogue, and—in Molière’s case—no longer accepted at court.
With this production, I have sought to bring this desperate cry to the stage—the cry of an artist, the plea of someone trying to make his audience understand his art, his theater, to the point of dying inside, to the point of deciding to pretend to be sick to protect himself from the harshness of reality. We’ve done this using the complete and faithful text, with the sole addition of Molière’s plea to the King, in which he asks: “Then tell me honestly, my sovereign Lord, if you want me to write any more plays. I do not wish to bother anyone. I would rather die than think that Molière’s theater is so repulsive that people detest even hearing its name mentioned.”

*The Imaginary Invalid* comes at the end of a turbulent period for Molière: as if in a race toward social ruin, he marries a woman who could be his daughter (and many believe she actually is), writes increasingly controversial plays (constantly enduring the barbs of the very groups he targets: hypocrites, misanthropes, misers…) and comes into conflict with the king’s favorite composer, Gianbattista Lulli. In this state, he creates for himself the character of Argante, the Imaginary Invalid. As Cesare Garboli writes: “Argan’s illness comes to the aid of the sick man like a sedative. It aids him in his deep need not to exist, to fall asleep, to be absent, until his entire life is sucked into nothingness. If life is evil, Argan asserts, one can live it only if one is ‘sick,’ or if one is irresponsible and blind. Argan defends an innocent refuge—his right to childhood.”
It seems to me that the autofiction into which all of us human beings have fallen for some time now—this constant self-representation of ourselves even in our most intimate ailments—is very similar to Argante’s/Molière’s illness.
We want to show ourselves as sick, to sacrifice ourselves, to die on stage in a desperate search for someone to care for us, to pity us, or even to mock or hate us: we seek any kind of parental gaze that allows us to exist. King Louis/the father is already replacing Molière with a new musician/son—one who is more cunning, lighthearted, and fashionable—and, paradoxically, bears the same name: Gianbattista. Molière will no longer be the king’s comedian.
Argante/Molière’s is a final, desperate effort. As he died, Molière must have told us something essential, something very close to us. One exists only if one is looked upon. Sometimes, one dies in order to exist.