Two men meet – whether deliberately or by chance we do not know – in a neutral space, an alley maybe, in a semi-darkness outlined by the electric light emanating from windows where people, or perhaps animals, live.
One is a dealer in possession of goods so mysterious that he refuses to reveal them; the other, a buyer with a desire so secret that he himself is unaware of it. We’re talking about something illicit, by any definition of the word. Is it drugs, sex, love even? Or are we waiting, in this growing tension, for the confession of something much more unmentionable? A cat-and-mouse game of desire and rejection, power and humiliation, as the two men negotiate a deal that will never be sealed. But in a world governed by immutable categories, their conversation reveals nothing less than the contours of human complexity. Bernard-Marie Koltès composes a masterful game of verbal dodges, deployed on a razor’s edge between realism and poetry, where a caress threatens to become a blow… Or is it the other way round?

La Bâtie-Festival de Genève presents two productions of one of Bernard-Marie Koltès' most beautiful texts, Dans la solitude des champs de coton, almost 40 years after its publication. Maya Bösch and Roland Auzet offer a double choral and intimate experience of this singular piece of writing.