Premiered in: 2012. Marilyn Monroe Theatre, NYC/ with Lisa Monde playing Isabel
State: Still running.
Creators: Written and directed by Lisa Monde/Original soundtrack by Lisa Monde
Featuring: Yohan Belmin, Karl Itzkowitz, Zdravka Katinic, Lisa Monde, Jackson Coe, Brando Boniver, Joseph Mayo, Ryan Dreyer, Hilde Skappel, Bronwyn Carrie-Wilson, Philip Oros, Yair Ben-Dor, Alison Latham, Rafael Svarin, Alejandro Stein, Eamon Fahey, Matthew Dipple, Sarah-Suzanne Vallee, Michael Billington.
Produce issued: Book “I Know All Save Myself Alone”, issued by XLibris Publishing / Playbill/ Souvenir Brochure / CD with songs from the show
Brief Summary:
The play tells a life story of the greatest French poet of the 15th century – Francois Villon, also known as “the Voice of Paris”. The story leads us from Villon’s student years, when he used to be an assiduous scholar of Sorbonne and foster child of the senior Priest Guillaume de Villon, to the time when the poet gets involved with a bad company and is being led into the mire of thefts, burglaries, and finally – unpremeditated murder. After the crime Villon is banished from Paris and he wanders in the precincts of the city fighting for survival, retaining his fervent mind, sharp tongue, skill of scoffing his enemies and ill-wishers in his poems, that have already become popular in taverns and in the streets of Paris.
The prodigal son decides to return to Paris and find his place in this world after all… However several years have passed since he left Paris last time… What will he find upon his return? Will “the snows of yester-year” be still there? Will his crimes be forgotten? Will the only true and pure love he had in his life, that he had failed previously, be still waiting for him? The ghosts and ill-wishers from the past meet him in his beloved city and being thrown into Chatelet prison for the last time, he feels the “stench of the nearing death”. Will life give the poet one more chance to find himself at last? The Fortune is kind to its wanderer who lost his way. Francois Villon is being banished from Paris for the last time… Being forced to bid adieu to his city and his loved ones, Villon vanishes from Paris and vanishes from History…