The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs

A contemporary dramatic version of a fairytale about Bluebeard, and above all a story of a woman who lives her fairytale ... only happiness, real happiness, is far from wealth and outer beauty. The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs exposes the discrepancies between having (everything, so one can be happy) and being (in fact happy). A house the size of a castle offers luxury and splendour, the “princess’s” new home invites into many rooms with all kinds of furniture ... But not to the small room at the top of the small, secret staircase. Nonetheless the realm of the forbidden entices, and in the absence of her husband the young wife is consumed with curiosity.
“What’s behind that door?” In establishing antagonisms between the real and the experienced from within, between now and before, between different principles of action, a dynamic dramatic landscape opens, imbued with mystery and poetry; a space in which forms of speech intertwine and which, at crossing borders, is inhabited by many questions. And love, as well as anxiety and pain, also find its place in it.

Internationally renowned contemporary Canadian playwright Carole Fréchette (1949) has received many awards for her work, among them the Siminovitch Prize, the most prestigious Canadian theatre award. Her play The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs, with which she will be introduced to the Slovenian audience, was shortlisted for the Parisian award Grand Prix de littérature dramatique 2009.