La parole au chocolat ! Traumatismes intimes de la vie contemporaine dans les Mangeuses de chocolat de Philippe Blasband

Abstract

In his play Les mangeuses de chocolat, Philippe Blasband tackles, with a sometimes dark humour, the problem of so-called “innocent” addictions such as the one the protagonists have with chocolate, transforming the pleasure it gives them into a compulsion that they seek to cure with group therapy, during which a series of problems linked to individual traumas will progressively manifest themselves, as well as the role that “speech”, whether singular, shared or reluctant, assumes in the search for the intimate depths. Through an analysis of the discourses of the eaters and the therapist, of the subjects addressed and of the relational dynamics that are established, we will examinate how Philippe Blasband reflects deeply on the meaning of literature in the contemporary world, through the staging of a compulsion associated with chocolate, a metis/plural product par excellence, dear to children and an “object of status” for adults, which Belgium’s chocolate masters have brought to levels of excellence.