Ces enfants-là

This is the story of an only daughter growing up in the 1960s, the roaring years of women’s emancipation and sexual liberation. Alongside her parents, she meets a host of more or less eccentric characters: Mamy Pilule, Papy with the burned face, Marraine, the little neighbour, Sœur Thérèse, Elvira Madigan, the dentist and the doctor, the girlfriend on the telephone, the best friend, the Other, the architect, the collaborator, Karajan and Richter, the jeweller’s son, the soulmate, the big neighbour, Woody (Allen), Bruno Cremer, Akerman (Chantal), the impotent and … Serge Reggiani.

This stage adaptation of Virginie Jortay’s novel consists of thirty brief tableaux, instant sequences that follow one another in quick succession – the same way you turn the pages of an absorbing book. In a score for two narrators and a doll, the two actresses – Janine Godinas and Anne Sylvain – embody the different voices and interpret this child across the different stages that link her to a mother who is probably ill. Between the two: absence, silences, all that has been left unsaid. Blunt writing that transports us between past and present as in a rally, until the final revelation, hinted at since the beginning. A taboo of inconceivable obviousness.

Ces enfants-là is a total show in which set, music and lighting design are very important. They are the joint creators of a living universe that is now oppressive, now funny: a shaggy carpet with a life of its own, miscellaneous objects containing memories from time immemorial, images projected on a screen …

Première
Création Studio Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles