The Toad Knew

The toad was right.

Why? I don’t know.

And neither the passing years nor that scene that joyfully haunts me will teach me, fundamentally, why we do this or do that on this great drunken boat we call thea… (that word needs a holiday).

Why do we hang our wires stage right rather than stage left; why does my body articulate itself against nature; why is it that what is foreseen rarely comes true? Huh?

And then, above all, why do we imagine a story and then begin it? I don’t know.

In this play, there are tiny mysteries that will swallow up big mysteries: that is clear. We will speak in the byways of a subterranean creature who, curious about people, gave them her trust and was betrayed, her heart broken. We will imagine the reprisals — siblings kidnapped and imprisoned under the surveillance of an emotionally disturbed kaleidoscope. And finally we will soak our exhausted feet in a bath— to raise our hopes.

I do not make theatre to explain what shakes our inner workings, but rather to roam around.

So, roam if you want to. Let’s live together, here, for a few moments, and perhaps foolish things can become meaningful, on the horizon at the tips of our noses.

The toad will tell us.

—James Thiérrée

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