L’Impromptu du Palais-Royal

The Comédie-Française, then preparing a tour of Japan to perform Les Fourberies de Scapin, commissioned Cocteau to write this Impromptu, intended to be staged as a curtain-raiser. He imagined King Louis XIV dining with Molière: “[…] the actors play together their own roles and those of the characters they portray.” In his foreword, Cocteau revealed the original source of inspiration for the piece: “Should I forget that I attended, on certain evenings, after the performance, and until the small hours, short scenes improvised by a group of actors and friends of the house of Molière, where, costumed with whatever came to hand — requiring a brilliant eye and magical fingers — all of them managed to raise farce to the level of drama.”