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The Colours of Anouilh

French playwright Jean Anhouilh used a unique colour code to classify his work.

Jul 25, 2006 Coral Andrews

Few playwrights - other than greats like Shakespeare - write in as many moods and colours as Anouilh, author of such different plays as Ring Round the Moon and The Lark

Influenced by the avant-garde leanings of Jean Cocteau, Jean Giraudoux and Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello, the great French playwright Jean Anouilh has a filmic view to his work. He even developed an unusual colour-coded system based on the emotional tonality of his pieces.

Pièces roses – rose-coloured pieces – are lighter plays like Thieves Carnival and Time Remembered / Léocadio. Pièces noires, or black pieces, is the term reserved for his tragedies, shrewd modernizations of Greek myths like Eurydice and especially his World War II adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Meanwhile, Anouilh calls his historical like pieces Becket (Becket ou L'honneur de dieu) and The Lark (L'Alouette) "costumed".

Masterful satires like The Rehearsal and Ring Round the Moon he dubs "brilliant" or "glittering". The "jarring" or "grating" pieces (biting comedy) include Waltz of the Toreadors and The Masked Dinner. Anouilh offers a playbill palette of many moods and shades for his audience rather than mere black and white.

An important reason that theatregoers are attracted to Anouilh is his consistent theme of resistance, beautifully illustrated in three of his most revered works: Antigone, Becket and The Lark (the last of which is a moving drama about Joan of Arc). Each historical protagonist makes a valiant decision in the face of extreme adversity and human arrogance – something that many in today's unstable world will ultimately face.

The copyright of the article The Colours of Anouilh in Playwrights & Stage Actors is owned by Coral Andrews. Permission to republish The Colours of Anouilh in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.