Plays 4

In their different ways, these plays are existential suspense stories, centred around a universal concept of time. The past is recreated through present moments, the future hinted at through shared memories, yet experienced from different perspectives. Fosse’s drama explores life lived in unexpected ways, with a sense of otherness pervading the present and colouring the characters’ relationships.

The Dead Dogs (written in 2002)
Sa ka la (written in 2003)
Sleep (written in 2003)
Warm (written in 2004)
Rambuku (written in 2005)
Shadows (written in 2005)
I Am the Wind (written in 2006)

In The Dead Dogs the lives of a young man living alone with his mother and his beloved dog, are shockingly disrupted when the dog runs off, an event that changes the directions of their future.

Sa Ka La thematises the experience of losing our abilities for speech, and consequences this has on a life. A mother is in the hospital after a stroke, without language she can only express short sounds.

In one day Sleep captures the lives of a young woman and a young man as they grow into middle-age and old age.
How would their lives have been different, if their choices had been otherwise? We meet different characters and their dreams an hopes in life, woven together in one apartment.

The characters in Warm move back and forth through time to capture past images and actions, to make sense of the present.
Two men meet at the harbour, have they met before? How long ago is it since they last met? In a past life they knew one another, and a woman who now appears before them. She wants to go for a swim; it’s warm out. Old emotions are brought to life, and with it, jealousy occurs. Time is at once eternal and frozen in memories.

Two people. One finds it difficult to speak, the other attempts to understand. But what is Rambuku? Or who is Rambuku?
We meet an old couple in their transition between life and death. They are ready for their journey into the afterlife, into the unknown, to Rambuku. As they attempt to see the road ahead, they are reminded of past journeys.

The story in Shadows slowly emerges within an undefined landscape. A man meets old estranged people from his past, such as his ex-wife who left him for his best friend and his parents. All together again they are lost in the landscape, unable to separate from one another.

I Am The Wind is a tale of enduring humanity against insurmountable odds. Two lifelong travelling companions are bound together on a journey across a vast ocean. At once moving and comic, Fosse dramatises the endless struggle to be human and returns to a fundamental core of his authorship: Two friends parting ways. One character moves on or passes away, leaving the other behind to remember. In this play, the first character returns. Or does he?