This is an ambitious project that would need far more money and support than I can muster. I got as far as a brief presentation in English:
The Borderline Trilogy is a cycle of three full-length plays (“Well”, “War” and “Wall”, or “Puits”, “Pétrole” and “Paranoïa”), in which an arbitrary division of territory leads to the creation of two distinct nations with different languages, different cultures, different aspirations. The dominance of one over the other leads to suffering, conflict and war.
To make the experience of division more concrete, the plays will be bilingual, with surtitles translating the English dialogue into French and vice versa. (They can then be translated into any two other languages, English and French just happen to be the two languages I am fluent in.)
Set in three distinct periods, the plays will have three distinct identities.
The first, “Well”, set in the distant past, will be a fable in the form of a classical tragedy.
The second, “War”, set in the recent past, will be a complex drama bringing together several strands of human experience in the context of a major geo-political struggle.
The third and final play, “Wall”, set in the present or the near future, will be a reflection on the search for connection in modern life, centring on individual struggles in the context of the conflict between two peoples and touching on themes such as terrorism, pollution, oppression, resistance, betrayal, the theatre, identity and love.
Each play is independent and can be performed separately, but the action of the first plays is the history behind the later ones. The hero of “Well” is a symbol of national identity in “War” and “Wall”. He and the heroine of “War” are both cited as examples in “Wall”.
WELL/PUITS
In a peaceful village centred around a well that supplies all the villagers with water, the elder son of one family is to be married to the daughter of another. The girl is in fact in love with the younger son, who has been sent away to study, as he will have no land.
His return coincides with the arrival of soldiers speaking a different language, who draw a line dividing the village in two. The soldiers speak English, the villagers French (although they will not be named as such: these are two fictitious peoples whose history and culture will be invented for the purpose of these plays). With the help of the younger son who has learnt English at university, the father persuades the soldiers to divert the line so that the well is solely on his side of the village.
A civil servant appears and informs the village that all those on one side of the line (the side with the well) are considered the subjects of an English-speaking prince and must pay taxes. Those on the other side laugh at the plight of the father who, as they see it, has made a bad choice.
But now controlling the water supply, the father begins to charge the other villagers for its use – a token sum at first, but he soon hikes up the prices. The intended bride no longer seems such a good match to the elder son, who opts instead for the daughter of the civil servant, who supports the family’s claims to ownership of the well.
The younger son crosses the line to marry the jilted girl, reject his family and defend the rights of the villagers deprived of access to the well. He leads a movement of peaceful protest, but his father, who has learnt to speak English, become rich and moved away from the village, brings in the military to quash the revolt.
The elder son has become an officer in the army and takes part in the repression. Amid the violence and confusion he rapes his former fiancée, his brother’s wife, and cold-bloodedly murders her so as not to be found out. The younger son finds her dead body and is heartbroken. The girl’s family and the other villagers spur him on to find the murderer and take revenge.
He is opposed to all forms of violence but decides to use his knowledge of the language to infiltrate the English-speaking army and try to find out who is responsible. He passes himself off as a fool in order to avoid awkward questions about his identity and eventually becomes a court jester in the entourage of the English-speaking prince, around whom gravitate his own father and brother – who nonetheless fail to recognize him.
Under the cover of his disguise as a fool, amusing the prince with the seemingly unwitting pertinence of his remarks, he discreetly leads his investigation. The strain of this double life – channelling his pain and guilt into the clowning of his mad alter ego, thinking in one language and expressing himself in another – begins to take its toll as he refuses to believe the mounting evidence… until his brother’s guilt becomes all too clear.
Unable to assume the role of cold-blooded avenger, he finally opposes his brother in defence of the French-speaking villagers and sacrifices his own life for the cause.
War/Pétrole
In the second play, the hero of the first has become a symbol of the struggle for independence of the French-speaking people that are now known by his name. Their land is now virtually a desert: the period preceding the action in the first play is now seen as a distant “âge d’or”.
The neighbouring English-speaking area has undergone an industrial revolution and has become even more powerful, although not all its citizens benefit from its riches. Heavily reliant on oil, the country has all but exhausted its own resources, and is drilling ever deeper in search of more. The latest discovery is on the edge of the French-speaking territory, and in fact the vast majority of the oil is on the wrong side of the border. The French speakers do not have the means or the knowhow to exploit it.
At the beginning of the play a young woman emerges from the desert with no memory of her own identity. The common sense and natural goodness of her replies to the questions asked of her lead the poor, French-speaking people to project onto her their longing for a solution to their problems in the form of a “saviour”.
Against her will, she is soon seen as the reincarnation of the hero of the first play. Heroic deeds and miracles are attributed to her. A group of “followers” with their own agendas gathers round her and each vies for influence over her. The people see her as a cross between Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc and turn her into a figurehead of the resistance to the financial clout and political power of their English-speaking neighbours, whose president tells his ministers to start a “dirty tricks” campaign to discredit her.
They spread rumours and lies concerning her past. Talk of promiscuousness, back-street abortions and mental instability abounds. Soon there are so many contradictory stories surrounding her that it comes down to a question of faith: people are either for her or against her.
Finally she is betrayed by some of her closest followers who invite the English-speaking army to occupy the country in order to save it from itself. The president takes the opportunity to seize the land he covets for its oil. The French-speaking people are divided into “collaborators” and “the resistance”.
Representants of the resistance form alliances with neighbouring countries and full-scale war breaks out. The young woman, propelled to the head of the resistance movement, is torn between her peaceful intentions and the violence of the situation.
Wall/Paranoïa
In the third and final play, the French-speaking community has been herded into an enclave, a sort of ghetto in the middle of the occupied territory, surrounded by a wall. The oil supplies have run out and the well has been secretly used as a place to bury nuclear waste. An investigation is being made into the poisoning of the walled zone’s water supply.
In order to earn a living the citizens have to cross the borderline every day to work for the English-speakers before returning at night. They are poor and oppressed, and in despair at this injustice some of the younger generation have taken to terrorism. The fear they inspire in the English-speakers leads to violent reprisals and a spiral of violence.
The son of a privileged English-speaking family is an idealist. He wants to bring the two communities together to live in peace and creates a bilingual theatre troop with actors from both sides of the border. His mother is head of the English-speaking secret services. A terrorist group sees the group of actors as a means to assassinate the boy’s mother.
A young woman is given the task of infiltrating the group. She succeeds in this and in seducing the son, but becomes increasingly touched by his personality and moved by his arguments. The mother becomes aware of the girl’s terrorist connections and contacts her to suggest she become an informant. The terrorist group decide to go along with this and turn her into a double agent, feeding the enemy false information before going ahead with the assassination.
Traumatised by her family history, the girl has been diagnosed as having “borderline personality disorder” by psychiatrists, and her position mirrors that of the fool/hero in “Well”, the first play in the trilogy, caught between contradictory forces and struggling to preserve her sense of identity. As the group prepares to put on a play in the walled city (that turns out to be “Well”), she must decide whose side she is on and what action to take.