ARCHIVES 2016 / Truckstop

A mother who manages a trucker bar, her delicate daughter, and a young lost soul of a truck driver: such are the three characters of Truckstop, who all seem to be struggling to escape a world of mud. The work of Dutch playwright Lot Vekemans, Truckstop is an intimate and claustrophobic play, as well as desperately relevant. The consequences of globalisation, the worries caused by our capitalist system, the dehumanising effect of work are all part of the subtext. Stuck in their lives as much as in their heads, the protagonists reveal themselves little by little, piece by piece. For if Truckstop is the hyperrealist crossroads of the free market, this anonymous and unattractive zone that nonetheless inspires powerful fantasies, it is also a place where it is hard to be heard, to exist in a “continuous” state. With no clear timeline and no literal sense to be found, the play is a puzzle that, through both form and content, holds both characters and audience in its thrall, but it is also a police procedural that Arnaud Meunier has chosen to tell as a tragedy in reverse. Just like the youth to which he wants to speak, every character is lost within his or her own quest for an ideal. “I like the gap that exists between what we're hoping for and what actually happens. This great riddle of adolescence, torn between one's expectations and anxieties at what one will become.”

Arnaud Meunier
In 2011, Arnaud Meunier became director of the Comédie de Saint-Étienne and its École supérieure d'art dramatique, putting both artistic creation and the transmission of knowledge at the forefront of his project: dialogue between different aesthetics and different generations, new forms of scenic writing, the discovery of new authors, the presence of artists year round, the opening of the space of the theatre to the public are its main axes.
After graduating from college with a degree in political science, Arnaud Meunier founded the Compagnie de la Mauvaise Graine in 1997. First noticed at the Festival d'Avignon in 1998, they were offered a residency at the Forum de Blanc-Mesnil, in Seine-Saint-Denis, thanks to the support of the Théâtre Gérard Philipe and its director, Stanislas Nordey. A lover of contemporary theatre, Arnaud Meunier has directed plays by Eddy Pallaro, Michel Vinaver, Oriza Hirata, or Stefano Massini. Lehman Trilogy, written by Massini, received the Grand prix du Syndicat de la critique in 2014, after being nominated for a Molière. In 2015, he directed Bernard-Marie Koltès's Return to the Desert. He has also worked for the opera, has a director and dramatist. In January 2017, he will direct Stefano Massini's latest play, CreCenUnSolDéu (I Believe in One God Alone).

Lot Vekemans
Lot Vekemans studied social geography at the University of Utrecht, before attending the writing school 't Colofon, in Amsterdam. Since 1997, she has written plays for both children and adults. In 2005, she received the Van derVies award (awarded every three years to the best play written in that time period) for Truckstop and Zus Van (Sister Of). Both plays were published in French by Éditions espaces 34, under the titles Truckstop and Soeur de. In 2010, Gif (Poison) was awarded the Taalunie Toneelschrijfprijs in the Netherlands, before being translated into French. Arnaud Meunier talks about his encounter with the Dutch playwright, whose texts feel realer than real, as self-evident.