Also, everyone thinks they know Candide - you hear people described as 'Panglossian'. So if Candide appears on a poster, it feels familiar.
Mark RavenhillI have not chosen to create a linear story, but a series of different narratives: in the end there are five plays that almost, but don't quite, add up to one play... I start with the story of Candide, being performed as a play within a play, to bring the audience up to speed with the story.
Mark RavenhillTheatre within theatre, when characters sees themselves on stage, always raises philosophical questions of choice and free will.
Mark RavenhillRereading Candide, I was struck by the link between optimism and the optimal, the idea that we have been placed in this optimal world rather than some other.
Mark RavenhillThere is the question of language. Although the play [Candid] is not written in strict verse form, there is an underlying beat of rhyming couplets, with echoes of Pope and the tradition of eighteenth-century philosophical verse.
Mark RavenhillThere is a remarkable nimbleness of style, a balancing act of tone, in Voltaire, which is hard to bring off on stage. When you speak the words out loud, the effect is very different from when you read them. So one needs to do something new with a stage performance, not simply 'tell the story'.
Mark Ravenhill