Saffron Morter-Laing

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Eline Arbo on staging Annie Ernaux’s The Years

The Years, Almeida Theatre, 27 July – 31 August. Penthesilea will play at the Lyceum, Edinburgh, 3-6 August, as part of Edinburgh International Festival.
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With its disregard for literary convention, The Years makes an interesting, and not all too clear, choice for stage adaption. What made you want to stage this?

When I first told people that I was planning on adapting The Years, they didn’t understand. They told me I was mad, but I wanted to tell this story because I think it is powerful. Yes, it is about a woman’s life, but it is also about a changing Europe. In the current political climate, reflecting upon where we came from and where we want to go is very important. The Left is turning a blind eye to the rising Right. Similarly, Ernaux also describes this moment of retreating into the self as the Right grew. So many aspects of this book make it an important story.

On a more personal level, I am drawn to memoirs; very often, there is something urgent in that kind of work. I love this urgency. You can see that in my past work with The End of Eddy. Though they are very different performances, there is a similarity in their proximity to the personal.

You’ve said before that theatre is an exercise in empathy. Yet, Annie Ernaux’s writing style in The Years avoids sentimentality. How did you negotiate this?

She doesn’t try to lean into sentimentality; I think it is effective for the stage because this stripped-back frankness is moving. The text is objective, but this is what makes it so powerful. We, the audience, have a chance to fill in the gaps ourselves. That happens when you read her book, and it is the same in the theatre. I think that it’s amazing, as an audience, to be given the space to link what’s happening on stage to your own life in your own way. I think that’s also why she is so popular; the form allows for universality. 

There are also instances in which I have focused on some aspects of her life, such as her first sexual encounter and her abortion, where I needed to draw on other books to do so. This is where I was able to find an emotionality, which is especially important for these scenes. But most of the time, I try to stick to The Years and its distance in the description. I see this as allowing for a universality because it’s not always trying to push us towards an emotionality.

How has the way in which this book is written, with its collective recalling of history and its use of photographs, influenced the staging?

Translating The Year’s unorthodox writing style was important. This is part of the reason I decided to have five actors play Annie. In doing so, I hope to convey the same feeling of a life lived. I want this physicality, and I think having bodies on stage is the best way to achieve this. That is the power of theatre; it allows for this confrontation with physicality which is so evident in Ernaux’s work.

Two particular aspects of this book make it interesting for staging. First, the description of the photos and, later, video fragments which are used to guide the reader through the passing of time. I immediately thought we could stage this – this is the bit that can pull the narrative through. Second, is the kitchen table. Annie always goes back to the kitchen table. When you are a child, you want to leave the table; when you are a teenager, you are more aware of the political conversations and might become more involved (and you, at least, have a glass of wine); and when you are an adult, you try to keep those children at the table; and, finally, as an older adult, you miss those moments. The table is the place where time passes.

That’s also why I cast women across the ages. I wanted ageing and memory to be translated onto the stage. The five of them create this story together: they narrate it, they play all the other characters, and they play Annie. This was based on Annie’s desire to create this collective memory. This is a crazy thing to do… how can you do that? And yet, she does.

Why did you decide only to cast women? Given The Years’ collectivism, could you not also have cast non-binary people or men?

I considered this, but you must be very specific when telling a story. I was afraid I would lose the narrative’s power by including so many aspects. But, of course, this play has the capacity to cast trans, male, or non-binary actors in the future.

I would say that racial diversity was one important aspect of my casting. This is a white, working-class story. It is, thus, a white perspective, and that is something I wanted to challenge in the casting. Given its collectiveness, it would be very strange only to have a white cast. There are discussions of racial politics in the text; for example, she describes the colonisation of Algeria. But it is a very distanced description, I think it is a self-aware critique of the ignorance of her society.

Your sound production was the subject of much discussion in The End of Eddy, The Hours and The Laws. Ernaux’s work is abound with visual descriptions, but the soundscape is quite quiet. Really, it is her voice that comes through the most. How did you negotiate this when creating the sound for this play?

I always work with musical Director Thijs van Vuure; we always develop the music together. With this play, we always knew that we wanted them to have live music. We wanted this group of women to collectively create this story because that is the essence of this book, and for this, music creation was a key aspect of this act of live creation. After this initial decision, we then needed to decide what kind of music to use: soundscapes, songs or extracts. Since the play is about memory, we used music to reflect this. If you listen to a song from the 60’s, you are instantly transported there. Thus, there are a lot of French songs that the cast had to learn phonetically – the poor people.

The Years is a very French book set in the post-war period. Do you think it is still relevant to contemporary audiences?

I find it very interesting that The Years is an international bestseller because it is a very French book. It is so specific. But still, it has this core of universality because it is written in the collective form. We can project our own lives into her stories because she allows us to do so. She invites us in with this ‘we’.

The text also teaches us how to negotiate the political climate. The Years is about a negotiation of the past, and this is vital to our understanding of the present. I was very shocked when I came from Norway to Amsterdam. It felt like female emancipation was not as developed. There has never been a female Prime Minister; 75% of mothers in the Netherlands have to work part-time because it is too expensive, and because there is a pay gap, it is better for families that the mother works less. It’s very strange and different from the Norwegian society where childcare, for example, is heavily subsidised.

When the play was first staged in the Netherlands, people were shocked. Many people told me they had never seen a woman’s life portrayed so honestly on stage. I am interested in seeing how a British audience receives this.

Many interviewers have focused on your feminism and political upbringing. Is there some way in which, as a female director, you would like to have your work framed as an artistic construction in and of itself without the imposition of your own context?

Yes. I am not against being called a feminist and I do try to mention this in interviews. But, in many interviews, I have been asked, or rather told, about my feminism, and yes, this is true, but I want my plays to be more than this. I want it to be existential. I think Ernaux also wants this. The Years is about female emancipation, but it is much more than this. It is about memory, consumerism, class, and, perhaps most significantly, a Europe in crisis. As we look to a Europe and a world in flux, it is important to remember that history is circular and The Years reminds us of this.
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Image credit: Ali Wright

Saffron Morter-Laing is a writer and editor based in London. After graduating from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2022 with a master’s in Political Theory, she began writing poetry and set up her newsletter, Anthropocene Times. She is currently working on two short films and has been published by various literary magazines, including The Kingfisher Magazine and The New Absurdist.