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'Memory pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.' She strikes a pose and the camera shutter clicks... A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men's bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover, seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click. The Years/Les années is Annie Ernaux's critically acclaimed 'masterpiece' (Guardian), charting a woman's personal and political life against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Europe.Eline Arbo's inventive stage adaptation was premiered as De jaren by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2022. It was first performed, in an English-language version by Stephanie Bain after the translations by Alison L. Strayer and Tanya Leslie at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2024, with a cast of five women collectively bringing to life the story of one woman, and a whole continent.This new edition of the play is published alongside the West End transfer in 2025.
'Memory pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.'
She strikes a pose and the camera shutter clicks... A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men's bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover, seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click.
The Years/Les années is Annie Ernaux's critically acclaimed 'masterpiece' (Guardian), charting a woman's personal and political life against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Europe.Eline Arbo's inventive stage adaptation was premiered as De jaren by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2022. It was first performed, in an English-language version by Stephanie Bain after the translations by Alison L. Strayer and Tanya Leslie at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2024, with a cast of five women collectively bringing to life the story of one woman, and a whole continent.This new edition of the play is published alongside the West End transfer in 2025.