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Bernard-Marie Koltès

West Pier

In an abandoned quarter of an unnamed metropolitan city in the West, there is a neglected hangar in a former port.
Once it used to be a busy and bustling neighbourhood with merchants and craftsmen doing business, but life has long since moved across the river, where the lights of the new harbour now shine. Near the hangar, only a colourful group of people linger, stuck on the fringes of society

Quai ouest, 1983

Black comedy

Premiere: 12. October 2023

Performance length is 2 hours and 0 minutes and has no pause.

Creators

Translator

Aleš Berger

Director

Janusz Kica

Dramaturg

Petra Pogorevc

Set designer

Branko Hojnik

Costume designer

Bjanka Adžić Ursulov

Composer

Darja Hlavka Godina

Language consultant

Maja Cerar

Lighting designer

Andrej Koležnik

Sound designer

Sašo Dragaš

Assistant to dramaturg

Manca Lipoglavšek

Assistant to set designer

Nastja Frey Gorše

Actors

Maurice Koch

Sebastian Cavazza

Matej Puc

Monique Pons

Tjaša Železnik

Cécile

Jana Zupančič

Rodolfe

Alojz Svete k. g.

Charles

Filip Samobor

Claire

Klara Kuk k. g.

Fak

Filip Štepec k. g.

Abad

When a high-ranking financial official Koch and his colleague Monique arrive one night, two completely different worlds inevitably collide. Koch is about to take his own life, burdened by unexplained fraudulent financial transactions. He chooses to commit suicide in an abandoned harbour, where he has childhood memories. But before he stuffs a rock in his trouser pocket and disappears into the
river, he is confronted by a few individuals who thwart his intentions...

Bernard-Marie Koltès conceives his characters as tireless negotiators, who repeatedly engage each other in scenes of exchange, trade and bargaining.

Although they are mysterious, obscure and difficult to define, each in their own way, their inner motives, whether material or erotic, are always of a practical nature. Their language, which leaps from the sparkling exchange of replicas to the long poetic monologues, is permeated with experience, radiating both madness and wisdom.

On the one hand, West Pier adheres to the principles of realistic drama, on the other hand, it establishes a rather abstract vision of the world, and draws its inspiration from the writings of Samuel Beckett. The abandoned hangar is at once a real and a magical space, and the events in and around it are becoming increasingly multidimensional. Koltès’ play, which is exactly 40 years old, about the collision of the upper and lower classes, gradually evolves into an evocative metaphor of the post-catastrophic world and is marked, without exaggeration, as visionary.