Swashbuckling (or De cape et d’épée)

Swashbuckling invites us to meet two brothers, navigating a relationship shaped by competition, imitation, and inherited ideas of masculinity. Set in their parents’ basement, the story traces how playfighting and real violence have molded both their bond and their sense of self. Moving back and forth between childhood and adulthood, the piece examines how these patterns take root and become inescapable.

Woven into this story are reimagined fragments of classical texts: Romeo & Juliet, The Three Musketeers, Cyrano de Bergerac, Don Quixote, Frankenstein, and more. These works are reshaped and integrated to serve a single narrative: the transmission of a violent model of masculinity from an older brother to a younger. Though all these stories are beloved, the play asks what these canonical texts infer about what it means to be a man.

The play is a conversation about the unbreakable link between violence and manhood in classical literature, as well as violence as a show seller. The glorification of violence as related to chivalry, honour and courage is incredibly prevalent in art and theatre. Violence is a language that is taught to boys as soon as they can walk, and as classical theatre shows us, it has been this way for a long time.

Written by bilingual playwrights and performed by bilingual actors, Swashbuckling will be presented in English most performances with select French performances throughout its run, under the name De cape et d’épée.