Based on Jean-Luc Lagarce's The Rules of Knowing how to Live in Modern Society – a cynical and hilarious self-help manual on how to behave written by the French author in 1993 –, the show combines theatre with live actors and shadow theatre and stars the intense Mariangela Granelli, winner of the ANCT 2020 Critics Award for Best Actress.

Being born is not complicated, and even dying is also very easy. Living, therefore, is not necessarily impossible. Just follow the rules and apply their principles, with the awareness that in all circumstances there is a solution, a best way to react and behave. Life is just a long sequence of tiny problems to which everyone must find their own answer.
This is the thought of the protagonist, Madame, who, with her very amusing code of etiquette, demolishes the hypocrisies of day-to-day coexistence and reveals the hidden meaning of senseless ceremonies that guide us in their repetitive circularity.
In their notes on the project, Mariangela Granelli and Fabrizio Montecchi say: “From the beginning, we conceived the set as a classroom, with the audience as students of an evening course on the Rules of Knowing how to Live in Modern Society, with Madame as a gruff and inflexible teacher, assisted by a school janitor, who is also the stage handyman. You are not in a theatre, but in a classroom: you are not there as a spectator, but rather to study and, possibly, learn about codes, conventions, labels, and societal rituals”.