Born in 1987, Gwendoline Soublin studied Dramatic Writing at the ENSATT (National Superior School for Theater Arts and Technique) in Lyon. She writes theatrical texts for adults, youth theatre, and puppet theatre. Her style develops the most different literary dimensions – from classical storytelling to contemporary poetry, to theatre dialogue and nearly-technical documentary. The plural quality of her voice allows her to give life to non-human, natural, metaphysical characters and animals – a pig (Pig Boy 1986-2358), a tin can (Coca Life Martin 33 cl), a dying man (Depuis mon corps chaud) or even the cosmos (Seuls dans la nuit). Mainly issued by Publishing House Espaces 34, her texts have received numerous awards (Prix de théâtre pour la jeunesse Ba-Wü 2022, prix BMK-TNS 2020, Jamais Lu 2019, Coup de cœur Comédie-Française 2019, grants by the CNL 2018, Artcena 2014-2017-2018, Journées des Auteurs de Lyon 2017…). Her works are regularly brought to the stage as productions and readings as well as radio creations in France and abroad. Some of her plays are translated into Czech, English, German and Romanian. Out of curiosity and motivated by a taste for the collective, she sometimes accepts commissioned projects and delivers writing workshops for various audiences. For the 2021-2022 season, she is an Associate Artist by the Amiens Theatre House and the Glob Theatre in Bordeaux. She is currently writing her first opera, an adaptation of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire commissioned by La Co[opéra]tive (a collective of six French theatre and opera venues) which will premiere in France in 2023, stage direction by Johanny Bert with an original score by Othman Louati.
Photo: Morgane Drouot
Depuis mon corps chaud – 2020
Published in 2022 by Publishing House Espaces 34.
Two monologues – two voices, bound to one another.
He is lying in the hospital – dying from a cancer that prevents him from talking while wandering back through his life in fragmented thoughts. She is barely out of adolescence and accompanies him – takes care, observes and learns to become a nurse, while confronting death with the experience of this very first patient who passes away. Without a dialogue, an exchange takes place, beyond words that cannot be shared. While his body lets go of this world, she is looking for a place of her own and faces the crumbling quality of life while knowing that this too, one day soon, shall be a forgotten trace.
Pig boy 1986-2358 – 2017
Published in 2018 by Publishing House Espaces 34 Czech, German, Romanian translations available Represented in Germany by Felix Bloch Erben Verlag
Pig Boy 1986-2358 consists of three parts expressing three faces of reality – or virtuality. The first part tells the story of a young farmer amidst the 2010s agricultural crisis who dreams of being a Cow Boy rather than a Pig Boy. The second part imagines Pig Boy to be the star-pig of a famous ham brand, brought in the spotlight during a virtual media trial where the audience can decide on his fate. The third part offers an escape way toward a dreamlike future, written from the point of view of a sow as she escapes from the clinic where she was made to give birth to human babies. It is the story of her flight to the forest, as well as that of reconciliation between three stories where animals and men are looking for a raison d’être, in the middle of technological influx and the rise of transhumanism. Even if that means inventing a new breed?
Seuls dans la nuit – 2019
Unpublished English translation in progress German excerpts available
One winter evening, as she drives back home from work, fifty-five-year-old Nour, a home helper, witnesses a luminous phenomenon, as beautiful as it is strange, among the Reims vineyards. This event – indefinable and difficult to share with her close ones – opens up new horizons for her as it unsettles her ‘unwavering day-to-day legality’. Nour goes in search of an explanation. Borrowing from sociology, poetry, and fantastic literature, this text questions our relationship to the marvelous, the cosmos, and the ‘intangible’. So as to better tell the lives we live down here?
YOUTH THEATRE
Fiesta – 2020
Published in 2021 by Publishing House Espaces 34
Nono – whose head is sometimes elsewhere – has always had one set idea: to throw a gigantic party on his tenth birthday. All he does is tire out his friends describing the garlands’ color, the cakes, and the playlist. But when the storm Marie-Thérèse bursts in, blowing her furious gusts on the country, everything is called into question. How could everyone get together when Nono lives in the building opposite? How to stay in touch? How to explore the padlocked, hygenic, antisocial world imposed on them? How to stay alive amidst the disaster?
Tout ça tout ça – 2017
Published in 2019 by Publishing House Espaces 34. German translation available Represented in Germany by Felix Bloch Erben Verlag
Summer is here – the radio belts out scoops, the telly is a buzz compilation. Twelve-year-old Eshan has disappeared. A little note on his bed tells his being overwhelmed with a world where ice fields are melting, polar bears live in hypermarkets and terrorists machine-gun their anger away. His little sister Chalipa, his sitter Samantha and two allies of choice, tiny Nelson and good-natured Salvador set out to find him. They engage in a great investigation imagining Eshan locked in his house’s garden bunker or, worse, having said ciao to the world for good. How can they find him before they need to tell the grown-ups?
