The Human Voice

Jean Cocteau’s 1930 monodrama The Human Voice focuses on an abandoned woman who sits by the phone, waiting the final call from her former lover so that they can sort out the last details of their life together and say goodbye forever. An emotionally-charged telephone conversation, which the lovers cannot conduct uninterrupted, because the connection is so bad, is the basis for a turbulent and multi-layered story, which along with the history of their relationship also discloses moral and ethical questions of the value of love and the traps of the telephone call as a means of communication. The woman, who had been expecting the end of the union, is strongly split between the rational awareness about the course of their relationship and her emotional side, which cannot accept it. How to go on, what now, was the entire relationship merely an illusion? In the intimate drama of a strong, modern and independent woman, we witness a key moment of her life, in which she shines in front of us in a mixture of determination, vulnerability, power and fragility through the universal human theme of abandonment.

The performance was directed by Ajda Valcl, who has thus far directed the surrealistic comedy After Magritte and two performances for children, Breakfast and Animal News at the SNG Nova Gorica.

With the amiable consent of  Mr. Hugues CHARBONNEAU, President of the Jean Cocteau Commitee