Prives de feuilles les arbres ne bruissent pas

By

Magne van den Berg

Direction

Pascale Henry

Performed by

Valérie Bauchau, Marie-Sohna Condé

Traduction – Esther Gouarné

Two women sit in front of their caravan on two plastic garden chairs…

One morning, two women, Dom and Gaby, are up and about in front of their caravan, a bit earlier than usual on this particular morning. They are expecting visitors between 10am and 5pm, and they have to make a good impression. So here they are, leaping out of bed in a sartorial ballet where stains and snags are piling on the pressure. Dom talks, a lot, which is probably a good thing as Gaby hardly says anything. While rummaging in the cupboard where their few clothes are kept, the discovery of a forgotten parka takes them suddenly back to the moment when Gaby arrived “like a deer run over by a car”.
A tragi-comic double act with a cutting script, Privés de feuilles les arbres ne bruissent pas is a story from off the beaten track, where writer Magne van den Berg, with language which on the face of it seems trivial, brings to the surface the invisible threads of social relegation and the wounds lying hidden in the bodies of these two heroines. Cut off from the world in the middle of nowhere, Valérie Bauchau and Marie-Sohna Condé transmit a melancholy yet radiant sense of humanity. The story of a friendship. Of an impromptu encounter with things previously left unsaid. You won’t know whether to laugh or cry.