When Bertolt Brecht writes the first version of Baal, he is twenty years old. His Baal is a romantic hero, a cursed poet leading a war against bourgeois society, whose tragic destiny is inspired by great lyrical figures such as Villon, Verlaine or Rimbaud.

When he rewrites this play for the fifth and last time, he is at the twillight of his life and reinvents a decadent Baal, a man of a thousand excesses, who consumes women as he devours food, dazing himself with poetry and alcohol.

From its first version to the last, the play charts the evolution of two poets: Baal, towards whom our admiration gradually turns into disgust, and Brecht himself, who at the end of his creative life strikes a fatal blow to the romanticism he glorified in his earlier years.

Adapting the part of Baal for two actors (a man and a woman), this new interpretation of the play explores the internal contradictions of the main character, and dramatize Brecht's conflictual relationship to his own creation.

Text by Bertolt Brecht, adapted by Chloé Galibert-Laîné
Stage direction by Chloé Galibert-Laîné
Stage design by Sarah Schneider (ENS) and Edouard Trichet Lespagnol (Théâtre du Temps)
Original music by Clément Di Mascio

With Charlotte Dafol, Yannick Barne, Jérémy Fantin, Camille Dagen, Juliette Gazet, Justine Sisman, Clément Van-Hamme, Théis Bazin, Valère Vanier, Marthe Degaille, Joséphine Hurtut, Antoine Stehlé, Pierre Maffre, Olivier Hercend, Mélodie Cholmé, Marie Villiers-Moriamé and Célia Le Blainvaux

This show was presented at the Theater of the ENS Paris in May 2012 and re-programmed at the Théâtre du Temps (75011) in Novembre 2012.

Trailer: