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Je reviens de loin
Claudine Galea
Actes du théâtre n° 29.[ imprimer ]
Camille, a wife and mother of two children, has left. Back at the house they wonder about it and talk to her. She answers. She’s there. Who’s there? Who left? Je reviens de loin traces the troubled border between imagination and reality. What’s true? The facts or the path you go down as you experience them? The story is told through several voices, a narrative, dialogue, songs, dreams and a chorus, and through those voices a strange conclusion comes about.

‘‘Claudine Galea is highly inventive. Je reviens de loin is written like a musical score with a prelude, impromptus, and first second and third movements. Furthermore, the playwright states that if there is to be a piano on stage (music is the daughter Lucie’s refuge), then it should be transparent. The play is constructed in a very particular, scattered way, with voices answering each other in snatches, songs sung, dialogue interrupted by interior monologues, and neighbours exchanging points of view – a whole world of voices trying to make the invisible visible.’’
Laurence Cazaux in Le Matricule des Anges

Reading in Greek directed by Esther Andre Gonzales at the Contemporary Playwriting Forum in Athens, 8 April, 2009.
To be broadcast on France Culture radio, directed by Marguerite Gateau, in 2010.

Characters : 2 women - 2 men -
Editions Espaces 34 - www.editions-espaces34.com

Third movement
Breakfast 5

Lucie, Marc and Paul with contributions from Camille.

LUCIE I’m enrolling in the School of Arts. Are you disappointed, Dad?
MARC Disappointed about what, sweetheart?
LUCIE That I’m not a famous pianist
MARC How about moving to a new house?
PAUL What if Mum were to come back?
LUCIE I don’t think so. I’m like Dad, I don’t think she’ll ever come back

CAMILLE No my house hasn’t changed a bit

MARC She won’t come back. Too long. It would be better to get a new house. We’ll rent this one out
LUCIE We’re starting a new life. Leaving for the country
PAUL Mum will come back. One morning at breakfast. Like now

CAMILLE I’ll just push the gate – it’s open. I’ll have a walk around

MARC We’ll leave everything, the furniture, the objects, the photographs, everything
LUCIE We’ll start all over again – from scratch
PAUL She’ll come back one morning at breakfast. She always liked having breakfast with us. It will be in the morning, like now. She’ll open the door and wipe her shoes on the mat. Then she’ll go straight to the chest of drawers in the hall, she’ll open it and say:
‘‘How stupid! When it’s so cold out! Forgetting my hat and gloves’’

Paul’s Song
You forgot your gloves
Better hurry up
Before they fade
From sitting in a drawer

You left your hat
So silly alone like that
It’s lost its head
Or was it you
Or was it you

You didn’t say where you were going
You just disappeared
Now it’s winter in summer
The sky’s upside down
And there’s a desert
Where there used to be the sea

You left while we were sleeping
The door was never closed
We lost our sleep
Or was it you
Or was it you

Dream or reality
winter spring summer or fall
The hat and gloves
When was it
The door’s still open
We lost the key
And never found it
Or was it you
In this draft we can’t count
we can’t count
on you