A Loyal Friend
First Production At Spa, on the 8th of August 1997, by the Nouveau Théâtre de Belgique'Belgian New Theatre', with Christian Labeau, directed by Serge Demoulin, in a Festival of Spa co-production
Royal Belgian French Language and Literature Academy Prize,1999
| 2001 | a new production at the Centre Dramatique Hennuyer |
Synopsis
After having lost everything in an accident, a poet taxi driver remakes his life by slipping into the skin of a dog: guide dogs, police dogs, dog actors, stray dogs...
A master of the art of the monologue, the author takes us on a stroll between delirium and philosophy, between reality and fiction, but always on a lead, it's safer that way!
Extract
| VICTOR | What are they like, children's eyes ? |
| MOI | They sparkle Victor, Victor. They shine. |
| VICTOR | What crap! You are speaking like the descriptions in your books. Only the sun shines. Make sure you remember that. And it's champagne that sparkles. The eyes of children sing. Can't you hear how they sing ? Are you deaf or what ? Don't tell me I've fallen in with a deaf dog! Listen : they sing the music of the sea, the music of the catfish, the music of the sculptor, the music of a pair of shells, the music of a snapping tree. And they run. Do you not see how children's eyes run. Do they go too quickly for you to see ? Are you blind as well? They run like antelopes at the Olympic Games. And what do they say? They speak, don't they. A child that doesn't speak is an adult. Can you not hear them speak ? |
Press
« Dopagne's universe is never innocent. The candor of the characters lures in order to attract our commitment to childhood, allowing the author to then play on the ironic cruelty which frames it, to enable us better to share the injuries inflicted on the sensibilities of contemporary tragedies » Philippe Tirard, La Libre Belgique
« Through a writing which is poetic, surreal or even absurd, Jean-Pierre Dopagne proves that he has the right to succeed those authors who have secured the specificity and reputation of Belgian theatre» Marie-Françoise Gihousse, Le Jour-Le Courrier
