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Neuf petites filles (push and pull)
Sandrine Roche
Neuf petites filles (push and pull)
photo: DR
Actes du théâtre n° 79.[ imprimer ]
Nine little girls play at making up stories, each in turn sharing more or less fictionalized versions of their memories, fears and dream lives. Through this seemingly innocent game and the issues raised - femininity, misogyny, social status, women’s bodies, and homosexuality - we see how cruel, perverse, ambivalent and frighteningly lucid these little girls can be toward themselves and others.
In her finely honed writing, Sandrine Roche provides future performers with a broad scope and material that is both powerful and free, jazzy and jerky, the highly personal world in her play encompassing even bodies and sensations.

Sandrine Roche was an award-winner at the Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de Théâtre 2011 for Neuf Petites Filles (Push & Pull).

‘‘What do our adult lives retain from our childhood experiences? How is a child prepared for what awaits him when he grows up? Who is aware of the harshness of starting out in life when called fatty at school or when others made fun of their single mother? A schoolyard and the horrors that go on and are said there prepare children for the adult lives awaiting them. Neuf petites filles strives to listen to the girls we once were and who have become women - women who are abused and suffer from discrimination, but women nevertheless.’’
Excerpt from the program at the Théâtre des Abbesses

‘‘Neuf petites filles features a group of people that have come together to act out scenes and stories they have made up.
There were two sources of inspiration behind the text.
First, a group of 9-10-year-old girls that I worked with for a year in an amateur acting workshop at the
Théâtre du Cercle in Rennes. We were staging Pinocchio by Joel Pommerat; I proposed themes for improvisations to understand their relationship to storytelling and to life.
I observed the cruelty and apparent harshness with which children replay what they faced in their everyday lives.
I wondered a great deal about what they put into it and how they played around with reality. I wanted to understand how these games - so frightening to me, both in what they said and how they were played out – were in fact only a means of appropriating the violence of the world they were forced to deal with.
The acting space became the space in which it was possible to question reality. A reality so strange, from the quasi-pornographic ads seen on tv or on posters in the street, to the expulsion of foreign children experienced live at school.
That’s when I remembered Claire Simon’s documentary, RECREATION (1993), seen a few years previously, which had a powerful effect on me. I was reminded of the schoolyard, so close to the playground where my little girls were playing.
So I wrote a game. A game about life. Life as a game.
We all know that living together involves violence.
Differences (socially, in color, size and weight) aren’t an easy thing to accept.
Living together means dealing with and banging up against reality.
The neuf petites filles (nine little girls) I show on stage question society, have a diversity of body types and languages.
How are individuals constructed? Through what means? What words and behavior are their references? Is it vocabulary that determines the person or the person who choses his vocabulary? Are we constructed from an image of the body, or do we shape our bodies to become what we are?
I create and write theater to speak about the world; it’s not journalism, I’m not supplying information.
I reveal a reality metaphorically, poetically. I divert it from its trivial everyday existence to get a better grasp of it. I create and write theater because individuals interest me, in all their singularity and specificity.’’
Sandrine Roche

First staged by Sandrine Roche in November 2011 at the Théâtre du Cercle in Rennes (on tour since then) and Philippe Labaune in January 2013 at the Nth8 in Lyon; Stanislas Nordey in April 2014 at the TNB in Rennes then at the Théâtre des Abbesses in Paris in November 2014; Alan Castelo in Rio de Janeiro at the Teatro do Leblon in January 2015.

Neuf petites filles has been translated into Latvian, Danish and Portuguese.

Characters : 9 women -
éditions Théâtrales

5 LITTLE GIRLS

- My father’s here. And my mother’s there. And I’m in-between.
- You’re in-between your father and your mother? that’s your story?
- The beginning yes.
- That’s nothing new.
- Yes it is. In real life I’d never be in-between my real father and mother.
- You’re never in-between your real parents in real life? Nonsense!
- No, not like that.
- What, not like that?
- I’m not in-between my father and mother like that…
- What do you mean, like that?
- Well there are two caskets on either side and mine is in-between. As a rule the child’s casket can’t be put in-between because in a vault – have you ever seen a vault? – it’s on levels you know, they put you wherever there’s room, above or below. Sometimes you can even find yourself with people you’ve never even heard of. Great-great-whatevers who…
- Stop it! That’s horrible! What are you talking about?
- You asked me to tell you my story.
- I didn’t ask you to tell me stories about dead people!
- That’s my story.
- It’s heavy. How about changing your story?
- But it’s life, it’s like that, there’s nothing you can do about it.
- Cut it out! Change your story! You’re flipping me out!
- I’m afraid that’s life. You can’t always do what you want.
- I’m leaving.
- What’s wrong? What are you doing?
- She’s pretending she’s dead. With her parents. It’s horrible. I don’t want to listen to that story.
- She’s dead?
- A stupid accident.
- What on earth happened?
- They were having an argument in the car. Because of my mother’s lover.
- Again?
- He let go of the steering wheel to slap her. She jumped him. They ran into a tree.
- In the SUV ? The brand new SUV?
- Yes
- Oh dear that’s awful. Were they killed?
- Immediately.
- Bad luck. And you?
- I was in back. Crying. I saw nothing, felt nothing.
- Oh! Poor thing, what an ordeal!
- Yes, but then again I’m dead so there’s nothing left for me to do.
- Yes that’s true, it’s better this way, otherwise…
- Otherwise it would be horrible. Looking after the house, the cats, doing the laundry, cooking…
- Oh dear!
- Oh dear!
- Really now, the two of you are completely bonkers.
- All that because my mother has a lover.
- Everyone knows. It’s no big deal.
- Especially since there’s far worse.
- You don’t want to stop there?
- Far worse!
- Well, I’m leaving!
- Especially nowadays…
- Because nowadays, as my mother says…
- You’ve got to beware.
- Of everything!
- And everyone!
- I’m leaving!
- Of everything!
- And everyone!
- I’m leaving. Do you hear? I’M LEAVING!

- Your father has no sense. Arguing like that. In a car. With a child.
- My father’s an idiot. Everyone knows it.
- Oh, really?!
- Yes, yes he’s a moron. That’s why my mother took a lover. That said, her lover’s a moron too. She must attract them.
- Well, now that everyone’s dead we’ll get some peace and quiet.
- Yes, you said it.
- Oh! What a beautiful story.
- That ends so well too.
- Yes, that ends so well.

-----------------------------------

1 LITTLE GIRL

A true, mysterious story in 9 parts.
1 – A very beautiful woman. In fishnet pantyhose. 2 – She’s waiting in a bar. 3 – She’s alone. 4 – All the men are staring at her. 5 - She’s really beautiful. 6 - She’s drinking a glass of red wine. 7 - She’s waiting for someone. 8 – Or something. 9 – We don’t know what…

2 feet on the ground – racing position hands forward – front of the body bent forward
Dash

PUSH

Hands pushing shoulders – cartwheel / forming a circle above the head
Lands in a squat.
Lies down.
Slides body face down/ Slides face down on body.
Face each other lying down.
Roll right - roll left – pressing down on the ground
Separation.
Hands crossed – stretch - straighten – back to back –lean at rest