CHAUVIN — SYNOPSIS
Nicolas Chauvin
July 4th, 1776 — > PATRIOTISM! < — 9-11-2001
Patriotism?
SUPER PATRIOTISM!
Chauvinism — The eponym!
Chauvin — The play!
“…free from history’s necessity to adhere to events as they actually
happened but could give the appearance of truth
by telling a story that might well
have happened.”
{Mme de Staël}
SYNOPSIS
Nicolas Chauvin returns from Waterloo to receive honors from Napoleon, whose charisma engenders a personified alter-ego of Chauvin (designated as the ideological IChauvin).
Chauvin returns home. His family welcomes him, but he cannot put his experiences in the Napoleonic wars behind him, nor does he escape the nagging spirit of IChauvin. He endures a tragical conflict between his domestic role and his sense of an ideological mission.
He travels around France, carrying his monomania everywhere. At a theater in Paris he interrupts a play, taking the stage with his ranting, but he still suffers from his ruinous vacillation. Climactically, IChauvin, the spirit of “chauvinism”, subsumes his domestic self. In his new incarnation, he abandons the distraught wife to march into the future of his movement without them.
Each of the three acts is a single scene, the play requiring three sets.
