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Music, dance

Dorian Gray goes Wilde: from painted to living “picture”

Jean-Rémi Lapaire

Résumés

La “lecture par-corps” est une approche active qui invite l’étudiant à utiliser tout son corps pour percevoir et ressentir un texte, en manifestement physiquement son intelligence des formes et du sens. C’est donc une approche incarnée de l’interprétation d’œuvres écrites, qui permet au lecteur-acteur d’aller plus loin que la seule « lecture à haute voix ». L’espace classe se mue en un espace virtuel dans lequel on peut simuler des situations, explorer les points de vue narratifs et interpréter des scènes, au moyen d’ajustements posturaux et d’actions vocales-gestuelles. En 2024, un groupe de 36 étudiants inscrits en master d’études anglophones à l’Université Bordeaux Montaigne procède à une mise en corps de plusieurs scènes du roman d’Oscar Wilde Le portrait de Dorian Gray. Les interprètes combinent différents modes d’expression : la déclamation, le jeu dramatique, le mouvement chorégraphié. L’intrigue a préalablement été abrégée pour être adaptée à la scène. La tonalité générale et le lexique de l’œuvre originale sont respectés malgré l’importante réduction syntaxique et le reformatage opérés. Durant les séminaires, des plages dédiées à la « lecture par-corps » sont balisées. Une attention particulière est accordée à l’articulation et à la projection vocales. On veille à ce que les formes gestuelles choisies soient en phase avec les significations verbales. On travaille également la posture, l’alignement du corps et l’orientation du regard, en lien avec l’action locutoire, les intentions illocutoires et les effets perlocutoires. Les étudiants sont alors prêts à intégrer les deux ateliers animés par Mélissa Blanc, danseuse et chorégraphe, dans les salles dédiées de la Maison des Arts. A l’issue de ces ateliers, cinq d’entre eux s’associeront à sept étudiants en arts du spectacle pour monter une adaptation scénique du roman de Wilde. Le spectacle sera présenté le 5 juin 2024, dans le cadre de la 20e édition du festival international de théâtre estudiantin TiLLiT, organisé par l’Université du Piémont Oriental. La représentation publique de Dorian Gray goes Wilde se déroulera dans les splendides locaux historiques du Théâtre Municipal de Vercelli. Un moment mémorable d’intensité dramatique, soutenue par des tableaux vivants à l’esthétique picturale puissante.

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Prologue

“Life (has) its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting (…) It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at.” (Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 2003 [1891] : 57)

Figure 1

Figure 1

Dorian Gray’s “extraordinary personal beauty” fills the crowd of his admirers with a “strange” feeling of “artistic idolatry” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 5-6, 14) - Tableau vivant, TiLLiT 2024, Vercelli, Italy

Introduction

  • 1 Critical comments borrowed from Robert Mighall’s edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Appendix I (...)

1The Picture of Dorian Gray first appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in 1890. It was immediately lambasted by conservative critics for its “effeminate frivolity,” “studied insincerity” and “theatrical cynicism.” This “unhealthy” moral tale was deemed “stupid and vulgar” and condemned as a piece of “false art,” allegedly recycling “the garbage of the French Décadents.” Its author was accused of staging the “mental and physical corruption of a fresh, beautiful and golden youth,” using “every abomination of vulgarity and squalor.” Wilde was found guilty of having written a “tedious” and licentious piece, fit for world-weary aesthetes, “outlawed noblemen” and “perverted telegraph boys”.1 The story, which should have inspired a righteous abhorrence of sin, presented a shameful celebration of “sensuous pleasure.” The “romantic friendships” between educated men cast doubt on the author’s respectability and made him a sexual suspect. Lord Henry’s epigrammatic wit and “manufactured cleverness” were seen as signs of Wilde’s own double life and intimate experience of “depravity.”

2More sensitive reviewers thought differently. Walter Pater (1839-1894), one of Britain’s most respected essayists and art critics of the time, was prompt to acknowledge the depth and magnitude of Wilde’s achievement in his review of the 1891 version of the novel. He defined The Portrait of Dorian Gray as a “partly supernatural story,” in which a desperate prayer is mysteriously answered. By wishing that the portrait should take on “the burden of days” for him, Dorian enters a Faustian pact with youth and beauty and has to face the tough consequences: a sordid double life, leading to near total moral and psychological collapse and “a miserable end.”

Ah ! In what a monstrous moment of pride and passion he had prayed that the portrait should bear the burden of his days, and he keep the unsullied splendour of eternal youth ! All his failure had been due to that. Better for him that each sin of his life had brought its sure, swift penalty along with it. There was purification in punishment (…) He loathed his own beauty (…) It was beauty that had ruined him, his beauty and the youth he had prayed for. (Wilde, 2003 [1891] : 210)

  • 2 Basil himself refuses to take Lord Henry’s “cynicism” too seriously: “You never say a moral thing, (...)
  • 3 Walter Pater in The Bookman (October 1891). Selected contemporary reviews of The Picture of Dorian (...)

3Pater underplayed what some of his outraged contemporaries had overplayed – the hideous corruption of Dorian’s soul, leading to the protagonist’s complete loss of moral compass and ultimate downfall. He noted that by gradually losing all “sense of sin and righteousness” Dorian had not only lost his innocence but also his psychological depth, passing “from a higher to a lower degree of development.” Lord Henry’s “Epicurean niceties,” he argued, were more “decorative”2 than subversive. Pater praised Wilde’s “artistic management” of the story, the wit and liveliness of the dialogues (written by “an excellent talker”), and the idealization of Dorian Gray by Basil (who regards the “suicidal hero” as “magnificent and strange” until the truth springs to his face). But above all, Pater sensed that the “general reader” would not be fixated on moral issues. What would captivate readers for decades to come and turn the story into a modern myth, would be the “adroitly managed supernatural incidents,” the “double life (…) of the man and his portrait.”3

4Pater was right and, in many respects, prescient. When I chose to organize “performative reading” workshops of Wilde’s novel at my home university in the spring of 2024 (section 1), the general outline of the story was known to most of the 36 graduate students (aged 22-28) enrolled in my class, either because they had previously studied the book or, more commonly, because they been exposed to the myth of “an extraordinarily handsome” young man, “in all the wonder of his exquisite beauty” (Wilde, 2003: 73, 213) who refuses to age and exchanges destinies with his own portrait:

Suddenly, there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward’s studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old ; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins ; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. (Wilde, 2003 [1891] : 88)

  • 4 “Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old (…) The hair would lose (...)

5In the diaries they kept and shared with me at the end of the spring semester, the students clearly showed their appreciation of Lord Henry’s “philosophy of pleasure” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 44). They chose to see his epigrams and paradoxes as a manifestation of wit, humour and free-thinking, not immorality, although they did perceive its manipulative nature. What caught their attention was the supernatural dimension of the Faustian bargain struck between Dorian and Basil's painting, not the sinful nature of the transaction. The Picture of Dorian Gray was art “breaking from the prison-house of realism,” spinning a “marvellous tale” and accessing truth through the medium of “fantasy” (Wilde, 1990 [1891]: 920]).4 Dorian's cruelty to Sibyl and cynicism after “the girl’s” suicide were viewed as a moral paradox but also understood to be a sublimation of guilt and a clever twist in the plot:

Had he been cruel ? It was the girl’s fault, not his. He had dreamed of her as a great artist, had given his love to her because he had thought her great. Then she had disappointed him. She had been shallow and unworthy. (Wilde, 2003 [1891] : 88)

I must admit that this thing that has happened does not affect me as it should. It seems to me to be simply like a wonderful ending to a wonderful play. It has all the terrible beauty of a Greek tragedy, a tragedy in which I took a great part, but by which I have not been wounded. (Wilde, 2003 [1891] : 98)

  • 5 “The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriag (...)

6Lord Henry and Basil's infatuation with Dorian,5 the dubious nature of Dorian's mysterious friendship with Alan Campbell, and the general homosexual innuendo of the story received only marginal attention. When drama students were called in to design a professional stage adaptation for the TiLLiT festival (Teatro in Lingua, Lingua in Teatro, see section 2), it was Dorian’s “wonderful beauty, that had so fascinated Basil Hallward, and many others besides him” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 123); his cruelty to Sibyl (“What are you now? A third-rate actress with a pretty face” [Wilde, 2003: 85]); his mental break-up and self-destruction that dominated their perception of the story, although they did choose to cast a glowing red light on Dorian’s monstrously distorted “picture” to underscore the damnation of his soul. Even then, the hell into which Dorian was seen descending was construed as mental and emotional, rather than moral and spiritual.

7It is the exercise of power, control and influence over the thoughts and behaviour of others that was understood to be the main dramatic force driving the story, not immorality. And rightly so. As Lord Henry notes, there is something “terribly enthralling in the exercise of influence” and “no other activity (is) like it” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 37). “Dominance” (38)–not decadence–was the name of the game.

Dorian Gray comes to life on a French campus : “performative reading” sessions and workshops

Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. The Decay of Lying (Wilde, 1990 [1891] : 925)

Defining “performative reading”

8In Institutio Oratoria (95 AD), Quintilian recommends using oral reading exercises with pupils to improve their comprehension of selected “passages” by “poets” and “orators.” Marking the right pauses and taking one’s breath at the right moment, deciding “where the sense ends or begins, when the voice should be raised or lowered, and when (one) should increase or slacken speed, or speak with greater or less energy” are physical indicators of how we “understand what (we) read” (Book I, Chapter 8, 1-2). This “admirable practice” is bound to “enlarge the mind and provide the greatest nourishment to the intellect” (8, 7), with the added educational benefit of improving oracy– a most valuable social skill.

9The performative reading scenario takes matters further. The reader is asked to adopt a conscious “performative behavior” while reading words or lines aloud with inflection. Performance is by definition “a dynamic system of action.” Physical displays of meaning and understanding are produced by actors, dancers, orators, etc. with “creative and generative force” (Schechner, 1988: 10). When the process unfolds successfully, when the performers truly engage, they are overcome with “the experiential exhilaration of ‘being in’” (8). Common signs of performative engagement are presence, bodily alignment and the creation of a strong somatic anchor, combined with the production of expressive sound and movement patterns.

10In “drama-based teaching and learning,” performance is used as a “pedagogical art form” (Schewe, 2013: 9). Performative reading is a performance genre in its own right. It creates a multisensory reading experience, rooted in perception, movement, imagination, rhythm, breathing, and vocal activity. It is one way, among others, of “constructing knowledge through direct engagement in bodily experiences.” Through postural and vocal-kinetic engagement, words and utterances acquire a “texture” that is normally absent from oral production in the language classroom. Learners no longer behave as “devoicers”– i.e. speakers “holding back their voices” (Piazzoli, 2018: 322-23) – but as genuine speakers who understand the semantic and interactional properties of vocal inflection and are ready to modulate their voices in situationally appropriate ways.

Performing in “recitation mode”

11All the seminars I teach on gesture and multimodal expression include performative reading exercises. The activities are typically placed at the very beginning or end. The lights in the room are dimmed. Students stand up and space themselves out. The warm-ups begin to the accompaniment of classical sonatas and preludes (Mozart, Chopin, Faure), followed by dance, film or theatre music (Glass, Nyman, Richter, Zimmer). Participants are first told to anchor and align their bodies, while staring blankly in front of them, motionless and expressionless. Stillness and neutrality must be experienced before motion and expressivity take over.

12The students explore the difference between various kinds of posture and attitude: dominant, confident, normal, relaxed, or drooping. Motion patterns are introduced, which are defined as “journeys” or “excursions” from one point to another: swaying from side to side; leaning forward and back; looking up, down and around; tilting and nodding one’s head; using one’s hands to shape or designate virtual objects in the gesture space (e.g. “picture”); grasping, holding and manipulating abstract words and concepts, as if they were tangible entities or substances (e.g. “beauty”).

13I then select words or lines from the printed script that I have prepared for the seminars and workshops (see 1.3.), using simple techniques to shorten the story, such as character elision, dramatic compression and syntactic reduction. For the present project, I cut and reworked Wilde's dialogues, preserving their interactional form or breaking them up into a series of short monologues containing epigrams, (im)moral statements or philosophical pronouncements on some contentious issue (such as living one's youth to the full):

Lord Henry (Act 1, Scene 2)
You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray.
Live, live the wonderful life that is in you!
The world belongs to you for a season, only!

Youth! Youth! There is absolutely nothing in the world but youth!

14I find it easier to deliver such lines as a group, in “recitative” mode, under my own “orchestral” leadership. For the performance does indeed resemble a kind of oratorio, with great choral moments interspersed with recitatives, duets and solo parts. To make things easier, when the time comes for the students to perform at Maison des Arts (see 1.3.) or Teatro Civico (see 2.), I have created a tragic chorus that comments on the actions, and forwards the plot. The chorus is ideally suited to large groups. It is in essence inclusive: anyone can join and fit, and anyone make a contribution, however small, to the dynamics of the performance. Self-conscious students, who do not wish to expose themselves too much or lack confidence in their own acting skills, know there is a “safe place” where they can stand, observe and react to what others do on the stage.

Chorus (Act 1, Scene 2)
Dorian Gray is charmed by Lord Henry’s voice.
Harry is brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible.
Chorus (Act 3, Scene 2)
Dorian’s world is a stage.
Where sin is marvellous and evil full of subtlety.

15During the performative reading activities, attention is paid to articulation and projection, using the “semiotic complementarity between gesture and speech” (Haviland: 198). The gestural forms that we choose are those that we believe are consistent with the discourse meanings and interactional processes. Thus, different words or constituents carrying distinct meanings may be located in separate places or trigger different kinetic actions. In “Harry is brilliant,” one gesture, attitude or location stands for this particular feature. When “fantastic” and “irresponsible” added, visible changes occur in the speaker’s posture or gestural action that mark the adjunction of new features. The motions need not be “iconic” (depictive) and can remain quite abstract and symbolic. What counts most is marking the difference between things, and using the gesture phases correctly: “preparation,” “stroke,” “poststroke hold,” and finally “retraction.” Work is also done on eye-expression and gaze-orientation. The physical action must be congruent with locutionary action (what speakers “do” with their utterance). It must also match the speaker’s illocutionary intentions (communicative objectives) and the perlocutionary effects produced (the actions or events that ensue as a result of speech) (Austin 1962).

16We also experiment with different tones, degrees of loudness and delivery styles. We close with a “grand finale” which recapitulates the activities: a silent choreography integrating various movements and postural adjustments, followed by a sudden outburst of voices, freely uttering words or lines (loudly or softly, angrily or peacefully, etc.). This usually creates a very powerful soundscape and an emotionally intense moment.

The “choreography of reading”

17The students are now ready to attend workshop sessions at the University Arts Centre (Maison des Arts) under the guidance and supervision of Melissa Blanc, a professional dancer and choreographer. Blanc insists on creating a sensorimotor environment and a pictorial context for the performance. The visuo-kinetic images that are produced in the first stages of her choreographic scenario will help the students later, when they are asked to design their own movement sequences. The title of the novel–The Picture of Dorian Gray–places the activity of painting at its heart. It makes sense, therefore, to invite the reader-performer to enter an imaginary art house or exhibition gallery, where they can stroll and look around, sit in a corner or lie on the floor, observe and reflect on the process of painting and its (unexpected) consequences.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Readers take up their “horizontal” reading position, lying on the floor
All listen, as the protagonists and members of the chorus read their lines aloud

18Two equal groups are formed. The first is called “Alive.” Its main function is illustrative and its physical actions are in line with the spoken characterizations in the script. Members of the “Alive” group typically operate in iconic (or depictive) mode, posing as statues (frozen figures) or performing short animated vignettes that are directly related to the script. The second group is called “Shadows.” Its members either react (mockingly, prophetically, etc.) to what they see, or choose to bring out some hidden or baffling dramatic dimension.

Figure 3

Figure 3

Members of the “Alive” group recreate a scene from “Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers” (Delacroix)

19In the first moments, Blanc invites all 36 participants to think about the physical actions and viewing arrangements that characterise the archetypal painting scene: standing or sitting, observing or being observed, painting or being painted, expressing or concealing affect and subjectivity. She then distributes printed copies of paintings by Rembrandt (“Syndics of the Drapers' Guild”), Vermeer (“Girl with a Pearl Earring”), Delacroix (“Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers”), Monet (“En norvégienne”), Van Gogh (“Pieta”), de Rudder (“Les baigneuses”), Munch (“Det syke barn”). The students recreate what they see in the pictures in various ways: mimetic, stylised, or deformed. They have to keep the basic compositions and movement patterns in mind, as they will be expected to reuse them creatively and expressively later in the performance.

Figure 4

Figure 4

"Les baigneuses" (de Rudder). Initially performed in a mimetic mode. The attitude will be reused to compose a kinetic background to scenes of agony

20The students now possess a small repertoire of kinetic forms that they can use for different purposes: creating a backdrop to a scene, marking the transition between two acts, striking up a pose while the protagonists or some members of the chorus read out their lines expressively.

Figure 5

Figure 5

Pausing and listening while members of the other group read

“Performative reading” as phenomenological experience

  • 6 “Physical thinking” may be defined as (i) the grounding of reflection in sensorimotor action and (i (...)

21During performative reading sessions, printed words are turned into speech sounds and physical displays of meaning. The entire reading process becomes a highly immersive phenomenological experience, where unusual levels of perception, consciousness and understanding are achieved. Participants build up internal representations of what they read, break situations and events into their sensorimotor components, and eventually act them out. They engage together in coordinated forms of physical thinking and imagining. They become fully present to themselves and pay more attention to language forms and meanings. They come to realize that acting is a medley of playfulness and gravitas, invention and verisimilitude, “fun” and hard work, which requires energy, concentration, and dedication hic et nunc. “While (acting students) are in (the) room (they) must leave the outside world outside” because “they need all of (themselves) (t)here” (Adler, 2000: 9). Students are no longer sitting comfortably at their desks, hiding behind each other. They are “totally exposed” (19) and must discover “what to do with their voices” and “what they can achieve with their bodies” (20). The sequences that they produce are tangible manifestations of “physical thinking” (Forsythe 2019).6

22Occasionally, the workshop facilitators are confronted with reluctant students, who resist, dig in their heels, and even refuse to engage. But the hostility or unease rarely last for long. Once the core techniques of interpretation have been practised, internalised and routinised, the recalcitrant “reader-performers” open up. Some may even go through a “damascene moment” and convert to embodied learning with unexpected fervour. This sudden and radical shift in attitude is not uncommon. It suggests that performative reading has a transformative effect on the students, as evidenced by the oral or written testimonies collected at the end of the semester:

  • 7 All the students keep a learning diary which they hand in at the end of the semester. Prompts are u (...)

I wasn't prepared for what was to come. To be honest, I was even apprehensive. Although I'm someone who is outgoing and doesn't hesitate to step out of their comfort zone, I lack self-confidence and rarely trust myself. I always feel like I'm being judged by those around me, and I often feel like everything I do isn't up to par. So mentally I wasn't ready for this experience. But the journey from text to performance designed by Melissa Blanc was both exhilarating and challenging, pushing me to explore new depths of interpretation and expression. During the workshops, we honed a variety of skills, from vocal modulation to physical embodiment, from character development to ensemble coordination. I was filled with a sense of satisfaction and pride in what we had all achieved. (D***, “Diary of a Choreographer of Speech” April 2024)7

Dorian Gray ‘s Italian hours

  • 8 Master’s program in dance and theatre (“Experimentations et recherches en arts de la scène”), Year (...)
  • 9 Master’s programs in general linguistics (“Sciences du langage”) and Anglo-American studies (“Etude (...)

23Seven drama students–Lisa Abegg, Joseph Adam, Victor Ducassou, Malo Gauvin-Drillaud, Tess Le Duc, Lisa Perdoux (Solène Lirus), Grigory Saxemard8–and five English Language and Literature graduates–Manon Gruffy, Mariia Ogneva, Chloe Pasqualini, Madelia Pierrard, Zohreh Sharif9–travelled to Italy to give a public performance of Dorian Gray goes Wilde on 5 June 2024. The international theatre festival is held every year in Vercelli and organized by UPO (Università del Piemonte Orientale) under the artistic direction of Prof. Marco Pustianaz.

Figure 6

Figure 6

Poster (locandina) for the 20th edition of the TiLLiT festival

Teatro in Lingua, Lingua in Teatro (TiLLiT)

24The trip was funded by a generous UBM grant awarded by the Language Faculty. Teatro Civico is a remarkable heritage building located in Via Monte di Pietà, in the historic center of the city of Vercelli. The ornate foyer and richly guilt auditorium were inaugurated in 1815 but badly damaged by fire in 1923. The theatre reopened in 1931 with the performance of Verdi’s opera Aida and has offered rich musical and theatrical stagioni (seasons) ever since.

25Teatro Civico first hosted TiLLiT events in 2017. Since then, the partnership has been renewed every year to the joy and merriment of all festival attendees. UPO groups and their international guests from France and Germany enjoy full access to the house and its state-of-the-art facilities. They also receive technical support from local sound and lighting engineers, which adds a professional touch to the shows and performances they present.

26The festival always attracts a diverse audience: city officials, language teachers, local UPO students, international visitors, pupils from local secondary schools, theatre patrons and ordinary citizens. In order to participate, the companies have to use a language other than their own. Guest companies from France usually perform in English or Italian. Our travelling company is officially registered in the festival annals as “Choreographers of Speech” but is more commonly known as Il Gruppo di Bordeaux. Members change every year–and so does the literary work which we choose to adapt– but the challenge remains the same: making a great classic of English fiction immediately accessible to all without betraying its complexity. Both the spoken and written introductions that I prepare for the performance must therefore situate the plot while raising the audience's expectations. The spectators, young and old, must be ready to process serious issues, strange situations and elusive meanings in quick succession. Although TiLLiT audiences usually have some working knowledge of English, they do not commonly associate the language with their lived experience of theatre in Italy. The following introduction was written (and translated) for the festival's multilingual libretto (program) to prepare everyone for an unpredictable sequence of events:

Dorian is only 20 when the story begins. His charming innocence and compelling beauty inspire Basil - a talented painter who has developed a feeling of “artistic idolatry” for his young model. But Dorian’s innocence is suddenly challenged when Lord Henry steps in, with a lyrical celebration of youth and pleasure : “You have the most marvelous youth, Dorian. And youth is the one thing worth having (…) But when your youth goes, your beauty will go with it (…) You will feel it, you will know it, and you will suffer horribly.” Lord Henry's words are no less than a poisonous arrow that has been shot into Dorian's heart. “If only my portrait were to grow old, while I stay unchanged. I would give everything for that. I would give my soul.” Much to his surprise, Dorian's prayer is answered. But the picture does not simply "grow older" while he stays young : its expression changes and becomes uglier by the day, revealing Dorian's cruelty and increasing depravity. Can Dorian's ugly little secret be kept ? Can Dorian stop his own moral decline ? Or is he doomed to burn in his own Hell ?

27The TiLLiT script was established by Victor Ducassou, Lisa Perdoux and Joseph Adam, with the help of fellow drama students. It is a reduction of the script I had initially composed for the gesture studies seminars and “performative reading” workshops described in the first section. Only minor adjustments were made and some stage directions were added.

Table 1

Work

Word count

Length

The Picture of Dorian Gray

(original novel)

78 842

100%

Dorian Gray goes Wilde

(script #1 – UBM workshops)

4185

5,3%

Dorian Gray goes Wilde

(script #2– TiLLiT 2024 festival)

2693

3,4%

Abridgement and compression of the original work

28As indicated in section 1, I had reworked the plot and adapted The Picture of Dorian Gray by myself. I had a vague and rather distant memory of a stage production I had seen in London long ago, when I was still a PhD student. As far as I can remember, the novel had been transformed into another of Wilde’s society comedies and made to sound like Lady Windermere’s Fan or The Importance of Being Earnest. The theatrical form was traditional, with a heavy-handed insistence on Lord Henry’s epigrams, like “Beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 6); “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it” (21); “I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex” (29); “Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot” (31); “Humanity takes itself too seriously. It is the world’s original sin” (41); “Good resolutions (…) are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account” (97), to quote but a few. I had no intention of turning The Picture of Dorian Gray into a comedy of wit, even if there was enough material in the novel to do so. I knew that non-native actors would struggle to deliver the lines with the right inflection, and I sensed that a foreign audience would have difficulty with the puns, clever remarks and bons mots.

29It so happened that in the spring of 2024, Kip Williams’s award-winning adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s story was playing in the West End, with Sarah Snook using multiple screens and hair arrangements to embody 26 different characters, in a dazzling, solo performance that relied heavily on technical gimmickry. Although I was tempted to go and seek some new ideas, I chose not to. Neither did I seek inspiration from screenplays, like Albert Lewin’s horror drama with George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield and Angela Lansbury (1945) or Oliver Parker’s Dorian Gray (2009) with Colin Firth, Ben Barnes and Rebecca Hall. However, I did seek expert advice from a prominent Oscar Wilde scholar, Prof. Pascal Haquien (Sorbonne Université), who had edited a French translation of the novel for a leading publishing house in Paris (Garnier Flamarion) and who kindly agreed to proofread the script.

  • 10 “Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. (...)

30In Victor, Solene and Adam’s abridged version of Dorian Gray goes Wilde, the dramatic structure of the story is further compressed and simplified; non-essential characters (like Alan Campbell and James Vane) have purely and simply been set aside, while the wild outbursts of anger leading to Basil's murder by Dorian are conveyed in just a few lines. There is no denying that what one chooses to leave out is definitely lost: some readers or spectators are bound to miss the lost epigrams, the deleted scenes, the revoked or marginalized characters. But omission, deletion and compression are inevitable and always serve a higher dramatic or aesthetic purpose in script-writing. Any kind of ellipsis–whether syntactic or dramatic–preserves something valuable, and that “something” acquires much greater salience and impact as a result. What is left (or spared) –the residue–is brought into sharper focus. In Dorian Gray goes Wilde, the following aspects of the plot take on greater thematic and dramatic significance as a direct result of the character and plot deletions: Lord Henry’s cynicism and toxic celebration of youth and beauty; Sibyl’s sentimentalism, tragicomic mediocrity and inability to cope with Dorian’s sudden cruelty; Basil’s “artistic idolatry” – a strange mixture of burning homosexual attraction10 and deep moral integrity; Dorian’s toxic cynicism and self-destructive narcissism.

From “picture” to tableau vivant

31One of the drama students who co-directed the play, Joseph Adam, had studied art history at the Catholic University of Lille before joining the performance studies programme in Bordeaux. He was instrumental in shaping the visual style and Caravaggesque aesthetics of the TiLLiT production, which is characterized by a strong pictorialism. He brought his own strong sense of dramatic composition and mastery of chiaroscuro effects to the tableau vivant technique chosen to represent Basil's painting and its evolution on stage.

Figure 7

Figure 7

“’It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,’ said Lord Henry languidly” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 6)

32Victor Ducassou and Joseph Adam’s plan was to create a living image that would represent the passage of time, the gradual transformation of Dorian's personality, and eventually the "mad passions" and the darkness of his deeds (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 151). The statuesque composition would act as “the most magical of mirrors,” reflecting the corruption of Dorian's “body” and “soul” (103), while ruthlessly revealing what was on his “conscience” (212). Dorian's misdeeds would alter his “pure, bright, innocent face” (143), as well as the tone, colour and arrangement of the human figures surrounding him (essentially the Chorus and two of his victims, Sibyl and Basil). The exquisite figure of the real Dorian–a man “made to be worshipped” (111)]–would be maintained until the very end but become increasingly agitated and "tired of (him)self" (143). Meanwhile, the "thing on the canvas" (118) would develop into something morbid and hellish.

Figure 8

Figure 8

Basil’s “full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty” has become a “monstrous” thing (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 5, 212)

33In the final scene, when an enraged Dorian decides to “kill the past” and “the painter's work” by “stab(bing) the picture” (212), the structure would be dismantled and torn apart by Dorian, but its components would seethe and wriggle like ghouls and eventually swallow him up.

Figure 9

Figure 9

Dorian sets out to destroy the picture– “that hideous thing”

Figure 10

Figure 10

The ultimate struggle and Dorian’s final collapse

34It is important to note that the tableau vivant allows participants to engage together in creative forms of “intersemiotic translation”: an “interpretation of verbal signs by means of (other) signs (that belong to) nonverbal systems” (Jakobson 1959: 233). The ability to translate and “transmute” is innate and universal. It is present everywhere at all times, in all human societies and cultures. It allows painters, sculptors, dancers, actors and musicians to draw, paint, carve in stone, set to music or dance, all kinds of stories (biblical, historical, mythological) or ideas (religious, philosophical) that were originally expressed in another medium, typically words (spoken or written).

35Each semiotic system (or communicative channel) has its own internal logic and produces specific effects on the reader, listener or viewer. The challenge, then, is to achieve “equivalence in difference” (Jakobson, 1959: 233), to resemiotise Wilde's novel as a series of dialogues and pictorial compositions governed by their own dynamics and aesthetics, but faithful to the form, spirit and content of Wilde's novel.

36The picture has “altered” and now bears the mark of Sibyl’s death. “If the picture was to alter, it was to alter. That was all (…) He would be able to follow his mind into its secret places (…) It would reveal to him his own soul.” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 103).

37Tableau vivant is a French expression that literally means a “living picture / painting”. It refers to a historically situated performative genre that uses the visual codes of painting or sculpture to represent a meaningful situation or episode. The composition is defined by a setting, the presence of one or more participants, and frozen interactions between them. The kinetic imagery produced in a tableau vivant may be static or dynamic, silent or performed to the sound of music and vocalisations. The bodily actions are meant to be expressive and compressive, and emblematic of a given theme or set of circumstances. They carry a special symbolic, dramatic or aesthetic significance that sums up a situation or set of circumstances, such as the grace and youthful beauty of Dorian at the beginning of Wilde’s story, the universal adulation that he inspires, the “worship” and “artistic idolatry” that the painter Hallward Basil feels for him, the formal perfection of the work of art produced as a result.

38The composition of a tableau vivant–whether for artistic, recreational or educational purposes–is an invitation to consider narrative, dramatic, pictorial and spatiotemporal issues more closely and actively. Designing a tableau vivant requires collaborative forms of physical thinking between the participants. The composition functions as an embodied “interpretation of an event, action, location, or scene” (Tortello, 2004: 204). In drama pedagogy and language education, the tableau vivant forces students to shape and unify the meanings that they perceive in a situation through a kind of statue play. The “frozen moments” that they enact together encourage “cooperative learning” and foster “creative and critical thinking” (Tortello, 2004: 206). The tableau vivant technique is highly instrumental in the performative reading scenario as it forces all members of the community of readers to be “active and generative” (Tortello, 2004: 207) in the here and now of their common elaboration. As Person & Fielding (1991: 847) note, “students understand and remember ideas better when they have to transform those ideas from one form to another (…) It is in this transforming process that (the) author's ideas become (the) reader's ideas, rendering them more memorable.”

  • 11 The origin of the tableau vivant probably goes back to “the pageants of medieval royal processions (...)
  • 12 “The tableau vivant, was first presented in the theatre, then practiced in private homes for the pl (...)

39In their early cultural forms, tableaux were live displays that were choregraphed for ballet, theatre, court, church or ceremonial performances.11 They were later adopted by the educated classes for private entertainment,12 to be performed in parlors as a pastime for a “select company of family and invited guests” (Lewis, 1988: 282). The parlor tableaux could be quite elaborate in form. Their preparation was exacting, with due attention paid to stage design, costumes, make-up, and actor management. In the typical scenario for a parlor tableau vivant, a scene from a famous painting would be presented to the public, in which performers would pose as figures. The process would be one of strict or stylized imitation, through a re-enactment of postures and gestures, and a faithful reproduction of spatial arrangements. The early social uses of the tableau vivant as “aristocratic entertainment” in the 17th and 18th centuries were thus based on “remake” and “citation” (Boucher & Contogouris, 2019: 7). The compositions established a clear “link between painting and the theatre” (8) which became increasingly popular in Europe and was successfully exported to the United States and Canada in the 19th century.

40In Joseph and Victor’s dramatic use of the tableau vivant for Dorian Gray goes Wilde, pre-existing works of art were indirectly “cited” but none were copied as such. The technique was used to create a slow evolving display of shapes, tones, attitudes, gestures, interactions and emotions that tracked and summarized the main events of the story, while highlighting the gradual changes in Dorian’s mood, conscience and predicament.

The TiLLiT cast and production team

41Director: Victor Ducassou

42Lights and stage effects: Joseph Adam

43Prop manager: Lisa Abegg

44Dorian: Grigory Saxemard

45Lord Henry: Solène Lirus

46Lady Henry: Lisa Abegg

47Basil: Malo Gauvin-Drillaud

48Sibyl Vane: Mariia Ogneva

49Mrs. Vane: Madelia Pierrard

50Chorus: Cloe Pasqualini, Zohreh Sharif, Manon Gruffy, Madelia Pierrard, Tess Le Duc, Lisa Abegg.

Visual highlights

Figure 12

Figure 12

Prologue

Figure 13

Figure 13

Act 1– You will know it, you will feel it, and you will suffer terribly

Figure 14

Figure 14

Act 1– Dorian would give everything for that! He would give his soul

Figure 15

Figure 15

Act 2– He is Prince Charming. He is what Love should be!

Figure 16

Figure 16

Act 2– She’s just a mediocre actress playing like a wooden doll!

Figure 17

Figure 17

Act 2– Sibyl’s body is carried away in a procession.

Figure 18

Figure 18

Act 3– Pray, Dorian, pray.

Figure 19

Figure 19

Act 3– It is your picture that destroyed me!

Figure 20

Figure 20

Epilogue– Defiant jubilation before the final struggle and collapse

Closing remarks

Literature always anticipates life. It does not copy it, but moulds it to its purpose. (Wilde, The Decay of Lying, 1990 [1891] : 922)

51The “gracious and comely” figure of Dorian Gray–whom Lord Henry compares to a “young Adonis” and a modern “Narcissus” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 5-6)–resonates with our own Western cult of physical appearance and “self-development” (20). It speaks to our societal obsession with physical health and beauty, our desire to preserve our youthful appearance, our fear of the destructive power of time, and our willingness to “realize (our) nature perfectly” (20).

52Dorian's “exquisite youth and beauty” doesn’t just inspire a “strange” feeling of “idolatry” in his admirers: it conjures up the terrifying prospect of physical decay, “degradation” and “ugliness” as time wears on.

53"You are young and beautiful, Dorian. And youth is the only thing worth having" (Lord Henry, Act 1, Scene 2); "You have a beautiful face, but when your youth goes, your beauty will go with it. You will become old and wrinkled and ugly. You will feel it, you will know it, and you will suffer horribly" (Lord Henry, Act 1, Scene 2); "I have no intention of enduring the misery of time and losing everything. When I find I am growing old, I will kill myself" (Dorian, Act 1, Scene 3).

54Still, it would be unfair to reduce the novel and its stage adaptation to the Angst and cynicism experienced by Dorian and Lord Henry. The Picture of Dorian Gray is also a celebration of “beautiful things” by Basil (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 3); a reflection on the relationship between the artist and his art; an exploration of human desire and weakness; a deconstruction of the confusions and contradictions lodged in the human conscience. And that is precisely why Dorian's tragic plight is likely to exert a profound and enduring fascination on generations to come.

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Bibliographie

Adler, Stella. The Art of Acting. Compiled and edited by Howard Kissel. New York: Applause Books, 2000

Austin, John. How to do things with words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989 (1962).

Boucher, Mélanie, Contogouris, Ersy. “Stay Still: Past, Present, and Practice of the Tableau Vivant,” RACAR: revue d'art canadienne / Canadian Art Review, vol. 44, No. 2, 2019, pp. 7-12.

Fielding, Linda, Person, David. “Reading comprehension: what works.” Educational Leadership, Feb 1994, v51, pp. 1-7.

Forsythe, William. “Choreographic Objects”. An essay. 2019.

https://www.williamforsythe.com/essay.html

Haviland, John. “Gesture”. In A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Alessandro Duranti. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, pp.

Jakobson, Roman. “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation.” In Brower (ed.), On Translation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959, pp. 232-239.

Lewis, Robert. “Tableaux vivants: Parlor Theatricals in Victorian America.” Revue française d'études américaines, Avril 1988, No. 36, pp. 280-291.

Pearson, David, Fielding, Linda. “Comprehension instruction.” In R. Barr, M. L. Kamil, P. B. Mosenthal, & P. D. Pearson (Eds.). Handbook of reading research (Vol. 2, pp. 815-860). New York: Longman, 1991.

Piazzoli, Erika. Embodying Language In Action. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Quintilian. Institutio Oratoria. Book I. Chapters 7-12. Translated by Harold Edgeworth Butler. Loeb Classical Library Edition, 1920-22 (96). The University of Chicago, online, (ed.) Bill Thayer.

https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Quintilian/Institutio_Oratoria/1C*.html#8

Tortello, Rebecca. “Tableaux vivants in the literature classroom”. The Reading Teacher , Oct., 2004, vol. 58, No. 2 (Oct., 2004), pp. 206-208

Schechner, Richard. “Victor Turner’s Last Adventure.” In The Anthropology of Performance by Victor Turner. New York: PAJ Publications, 1988, pp. 7-32.

Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. London: Penguin Books, 2003 (1891).

Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying - An Observation. In The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Leicester : Blitz Editions, 1990 (1891), pp. 909-931.

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Notes

1 Critical comments borrowed from Robert Mighall’s edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Appendix I (2003: 214-19). The “outlawed noblemen” and “perverted telegraph boys” are a thinly disguised allusion to “Cleveland Street affair” in September 1989. The scandal had broken out shortly before the publication of Wilde’s novel. The police had discovered a homosexual brothel (set in Cleveland Street, London), whose aristocratic patrons hired young men from the nearby Telegraph Office.

2 Basil himself refuses to take Lord Henry’s “cynicism” too seriously: “You never say a moral thing, and you never do a wrong thing. Your cynicism is simply a pose.” (Wilde, 2003: 8).

3 Walter Pater in The Bookman (October 1891). Selected contemporary reviews of The Picture of Dorian Gray (2003: 220-22).

4 “Hour by hour, and week by week, the thing upon the canvas was growing old (…) The hair would lose its brightness, the mouth would gape or droop, would be foolish or gross, as the mouths of old men are. There would be the wrinkled throat, the cold blue-veined hands, the twisted body, that he remembered in the grandfather who had been so stern to him in his boyhood.” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 118)

5 “The painter was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage (…) A strange sense of loss came over him. He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. Life had come between them.” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 78)

6 “Physical thinking” may be defined as (i) the grounding of reflection in sensorimotor action and (ii) the attribution of visible kinetic form to mental processes. In dance, physical thinking may be triggered or stimulated by the presence of “choreographic objects” (Forsythe).

7 All the students keep a learning diary which they hand in at the end of the semester. Prompts are usually given to help them record their sensations and reflect on their physical reading experience.

8 Master’s program in dance and theatre (“Experimentations et recherches en arts de la scène”), Year 1, UBM, France.

9 Master’s programs in general linguistics (“Sciences du langage”) and Anglo-American studies (“Etudes anglophones”), Year 1, UBM, France.

10 “Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power by you (…) I worshipped you. I grew jealous of every one to whom you spoke. I wanted to have you all to myself” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 110).

11 The origin of the tableau vivant probably goes back to “the pageants of medieval royal processions and Christmas nativity scenes” (Lewis, 1988: 280). This particular performative genre “became extremely popular in Britain and America in the 19th century and was mainly used for representations of classical mythological statues, of familiar paintings, and historical scenes” (281).

12 “The tableau vivant, was first presented in the theatre, then practiced in private homes for the pleasure of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, as well as for charity and educational purposes” (Boucher & Contogouris, 2019: 9)

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1
Légende Dorian Gray’s “extraordinary personal beauty” fills the crowd of his admirers with a “strange” feeling of “artistic idolatry” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 5-6, 14) - Tableau vivant, TiLLiT 2024, Vercelli, Italy
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 186k
Titre Figure 2
Légende Readers take up their “horizontal” reading position, lying on the floorAll listen, as the protagonists and members of the chorus read their lines aloud
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 144k
Titre Figure 3
Légende Members of the “Alive” group recreate a scene from “Le Christ au Jardin des Oliviers” (Delacroix)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 196k
Titre Figure 4
Légende "Les baigneuses" (de Rudder). Initially performed in a mimetic mode. The attitude will be reused to compose a kinetic background to scenes of agony
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 111k
Titre Figure 5
Légende Pausing and listening while members of the other group read
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 166k
Titre Figure 6
Légende Poster (locandina) for the 20th edition of the TiLLiT festival
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 193k
Titre Figure 7
Légende “’It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,’ said Lord Henry languidly” (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 6)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 153k
Titre Figure 8
Légende Basil’s “full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty” has become a “monstrous” thing (Wilde, 2003 [1891]: 5, 212)
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-8.png
Fichier image/png, 429k
Titre Figure 9
Légende Dorian sets out to destroy the picture– “that hideous thing”
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-9.png
Fichier image/png, 395k
Titre Figure 10
Légende The ultimate struggle and Dorian’s final collapse
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-10.png
Fichier image/png, 407k
Titre Figure 11
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-11.png
Fichier image/png, 437k
Titre Figure 12
Légende Prologue
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-12.png
Fichier image/png, 600k
Titre Figure 13
Légende Act 1– You will know it, you will feel it, and you will suffer terribly
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-13.png
Fichier image/png, 466k
Titre Figure 14
Légende Act 1– Dorian would give everything for that! He would give his soul
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-14.png
Fichier image/png, 775k
Titre Figure 15
Légende Act 2– He is Prince Charming. He is what Love should be!
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-15.png
Fichier image/png, 516k
Titre Figure 16
Légende Act 2– She’s just a mediocre actress playing like a wooden doll!
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-16.png
Fichier image/png, 688k
Titre Figure 17
Légende Act 2– Sibyl’s body is carried away in a procession.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-17.png
Fichier image/png, 642k
Titre Figure 18
Légende Act 3– Pray, Dorian, pray.
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-18.png
Fichier image/png, 468k
Titre Figure 19
Légende Act 3– It is your picture that destroyed me!
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-19.png
Fichier image/png, 703k
Titre Figure 20
Légende Epilogue– Defiant jubilation before the final struggle and collapse
URL http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/docannexe/image/67022/img-20.png
Fichier image/png, 519k
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Jean-Rémi Lapaire, « Dorian Gray goes Wilde: from painted to living “picture” »Miranda [En ligne], 31 | 2025, mis en ligne le 03 juin 2025, consulté le 13 décembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/miranda/67022 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/141w0

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Jean-Rémi Lapaire

Professeur émérite
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
jrlapaire@u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr

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