Die Regeln der Lebenskunst in der modernen Gesellschaft

Living between these two events is no particular challenge either. Just follow the rules and accept the principles of society, and everything goes smoothly. No sooner has a human being come into the world than he or she is already subject to decisions, controls, threats, standards of behavior imposed as the only valid ones, and consequences for failing to comply with them.

But the person who controls his emotions and cries, for example, only when it remains within socially acceptable limits, i.e. at a funeral or a wedding, has no difficulties and can live happily ever after, until he is "disposed of" in accordance with the rules. But is it still a life? How is individuality, how is freedom, possible in a social system that, out of fear of disorder and chaos, regulates and determines everything?

In this text written in 1994, Lagarce poses with fascinating coherence the question of the extent to which conventions, the "rules of the art of living" that structure life from the cradle to the grave, can be more than a form of reprimand dictated by the superego.