A play, “Battue La Terre” innovatively intertwines tennis and theatre by turning the “love failure” trope into a psychology master class to tackle a range of behavioural traits---trust issues, anxiety, insecurity and possessiveness.
The play, whose title roughly translates to ‘beaten earth’, by Compagnie Étéya, was brought to the city by the Alliance Francaise network and staged at the tennis lawn of the Cercle De Pondicherry, a French-era recreation club.
A farewell game
“Battue la Terre” is a theatrical project designed to be performed on a tennis court where a couple returns to the tennis court, their favourite rendezvous filled with fond memories, for what would be a farewell game before they part ways. It is a meet-up to confront and challenge each other; to retrace a poetry of memories, and to gain the courage to say goodbye.
The play was performed earlier in Delhi in collaboration with the French Embassy in India, the French Institute in India, the Embassy of Switzerland in India, and the Indo-French Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It was also performed in Mumbai.
As soon as Eliott (Lionel Fournier) and Camille (Chloé Zufferey) begin that one-last-game, it is clear that this is no banal lovers’ tiff, and that a final break-up, as graceful and painless as can be, is the denouement.
“I chose tennis because I find it to be a theatrical sport. A lot of stories are told between two people playing tennis,” said Mr. Fournier, who wrote the script. “Everyone has their own portion of the court, perfectly equitable, exactly symmetrical. Everyone has the same space to play and speak. The two people are playing together, yet each for themselves. It’s a sport I find very beautiful to watch, and I found a lot of parallels with the notion of the couple,” he said.
While the experimental fusion of theatre and tennis and a large screen displaying English subtitles to the French conversation between the soon-to-be-exes is a striking form of storytelling, it is the equally solid writing that is the play’s forte.
Through arguments, angry outbursts, soul-searching, and flashes of nostalgia, the play alternates between the game and the plot as the couple move agonisingly towards the realisation that the magic has worn off, the very traits that drew them together in the first place. As they imagine how the other would cope with the night after the break-up, it is a moment of deep irony and insight as we are presented the plight of two souls who understood each other so well, were still not meant to be together.
There are amusing quirks such as when Camille, in spite of her photographic memory of their time in a hotel in Morocco, struggles to recall the song that they enjoyed then. The song from their Morocco memories, Patrick Watson’s “Melody Noir”, sets up the backdrop for the final scene marking the end of the game, the play and the relationship. The couple approach the net for one final hug before trudging their separate ways into the solitude of the night.
