THAT’S WHERE OUR STEPS BEGIN...
In Mazilier’s Corsair, heroes are XIX’s heroes: Men. In this new version, women are the new heroins.
Conrad is no more a famous adventurer but a Prince, stuck in a world that another men have designed for him, with rules and ceremonials perpetuated without anymore direction but protect this patriarchal society.
Medora and the other women are the one who are leading the path to freedom and equality. They are not completely free yet because some of them are captives, Medora/ La-Mort-Rouge has to fight and maybe to give away something of her personality to reach her goal and free her sister, but they are in motion.
Two acts are taking place on two different boats. Boat where already present in Corsair at the XIX century, but they are now the center of the action. Traditionally, boats represent change, departure, moving from a state to another one.
If a small boat represent death, like in mythology, a boat symbolize life.
The boat and the heroin are one in this version: moving to something new.
La-Mort-Rouge and Le Fol are not corsairs, but pirates. Corsairs are acting on behalf of, and pirate are acting for themselves.
In Mazilier’s version Conrad is a corsair but we don’t know who he is serving. The heroin is a pirate, embodiment of freedom. As is Le Fol, a free man, even if he is not a good man. On their boat every single pirate is different from the other, came from a different part of the world.
It is the opposite at Conrad court, or in Lankedem’s Crew. If there is a corsair in this version, it’s Lankedem. He is serving Conrad’s kingdom. And he is the one who allows the meeting of the two separate world, the one of La-Mort-Rouge and the one of Conrad.
When Conrad and la-Mort-Rouge come together in the third act, it’s like a revelation. For both. Not a romantic one, but an essential one.
When you discover that your enemy is a human being like you are, with his own desire, dreams, fears, limits. This threatening pirate that every one feared is in reality a woman who, for the power of a sister’s love, is crossing the seas.
Something makes suddenly sense for this prince who accomplishes the same tasks every day, who has not choose his destiny, who is perpetuating a tradition without knowing why.
La-Mort-Rouge/Medora, is moved by the fact that this man refuses to fight again when he hear her truth. Something in her is asking also: “why fighting again now it’s over?”. Both of them have traveled. The man is not the savior as in the old version but they save themselves together. They help the other to move in a different way, which allows to evolves.
Céline Barcaroli