Théâtre

« This is the story of Bella who wakes up one morning and realises that she can’t go on. »

This is how “Dirty Week-end” starts, the astonishing thriller by Helen Zahavi, which provoked such great scandal when it was published in England in 1991 that they tried to banned it by the censor. It was the first novel of a young woman of 25 years old.

In just one “dirty weekend”, the furious reversal of the balance of power between men and women in contemporary society is installed. As to this day, in France, every three days a woman dies as a result of conjugal violence. Thousands of women live in fear, at home or out on the streets, as victims of sexual harassment among other things. By killing, Bella assumes a new identity, builds another relationship with herself and others. It would be a huge mistake to take this play as a simple turn or not to see more than a “primary response” to macho violence. Dirty week-end stresses, right from the beginning, the fact that “Bella is an ordinary girl. England is full of people being hurt in silence not to disturb the neighbours.” Besides the focus on the specifications of women in the imaginary situations, this novel also elaborates the problem of “the Weak” and the question whether or not violence is inevitable to attain emancipation. Dirty week-end is everything but real. It’s true that, every time, our attention is drawn to real things, lived or observed, but it’s the accumulation, the excess, the character that makes it a sort of a philosophical fairy tale, funny, sarcastic, raise questions about our values, our visions on to the world...