Les Métamorphoses

David Bobée directs the École du Nord students’ graduation performance by inviting them to immerse themselves in one of the foundational texts of Western literature: Ovid’s *Metamorphoses*. This great mythological poem chronicles our humanity since the creation of the world, in a time when the boundaries between humans, animals, plants, and minerals had not yet been drawn, and when people were subject to the whims of the gods and to violence.

Author Penda Diouf guides students through a contemporary rewriting of these foundational tales. Midas, Tiresias, Arachne, Orpheus, Eurydice: these mythological figures serve as mirrors held up to our own era, questioning how a youth confronted with the political and ecological upheavals of the present seeks—like Ovid’s characters—a path to resist and survive.

On stage, a post-apocalyptic setting: charred car wrecks, remnants of a vanished world, from which emerge hybrid creatures straddling two eras. Ancient mythology and contemporary imagination converge to pose a simple question: what is it that, throughout history, has made us human beings capable of weathering the worst adversities?