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A girl sits on a sofa, not knowing what to do with herself. She argues with her mother and envies her older sister. She also longs for her absent father, a seaman. A middle-aged woman paints a portrait of herself as a young girl, sitting on a sofa, but she's beginning to doubt her artistic ability. Still at odds with her sister and her mother and haunted by her dead father, she's unable to shake the continuing presence of the past in her life.
Jon Fosse's new play, and this English version by David Harrower, were commissioned by the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.
About the author
Jon Fosse is the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2023. Jon Fosse's work includes novels, poetry, essays and books for children. He is one of the most produced playwrights in Europe and his plays have been translated into more than forty languages. Methuen Drama publishes
Plays One (
Someone Is Going to Come, The Name, The Guitar Man, The Child),
Plays Three (
Mother and Child, Sleep my Baby Sleep, Afternoon, Beautiful,
Death Variations),
Plays Four (
And We'll Never Be Parted, The Son, Visits, Meanwhile the Lights Go Down and Everything Becomes Black),
Plays Five (
Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, A Red Butterfly's Wing, Warm, Telemakos, Sleep),
Nightsongs,
The Girl on the Sofa and
I Am The Wind. Fosse was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite of France in 2007 and received The International Ibsen Award in 2010.
Summary
The Girl on the Sofa is a translation of a play by Norway's greatest living writer, Jon Fosse. Translated here by Socttish playwright David Harrower and oroiginally produced at Edinburgh's prestigious Traverse Theatre.
Foreword
A girl sits on a sofa, not knowing what to do with herself. She argues with her mother and envies her older sister. She also longs for her absent father, a seaman. A middle-aged woman paints a portrait of herself as a young girl, sitting on a sofa, but she’s beginning to doubt her artistic ability. Still at odds with her sister and her mother and haunted by her dead father, she’s unable to shake the continuing presence of the past in her life…
Additional text
Brilliant - Paradoxically, it creates something of great aesthetic beauty out of a work that deals with painter's block
