Based on real life
Bruno Boëglin based les Aventures de soeur Solange on real life. He met the "real" Sister Solange by chance in Marseille. Her Order had become active again and, after more than twenty-one years in the convent, she was leaving to carry out apostolic missions around the world. Bruno Boëglin met her two or three times. "That was as far as it went. From the little that she told me, I had the starting idea. The rest of her life was her business." The author's imagination set to work. Les Aventures de soeur Solange was also the promise he had made to Miou-Miou to write a play for her one day.

Wanting to write about isolation
Bruno Boëglin's play could bring to mind La Religieuse by Diderot. He especially wanted to write about isolation. "I've always wondered what everyday life is like after being cut off from the world for so long. You'd have to catch up twenty years, you'd have to learn how to live with people again. This could be true for a prisoner. Or for someone who wakes up after a long time in a coma. Soeur Solange is in the world, but in an strange way." Bruno Boëglin's heroine spent twenty-one years of her life between the walls of a convent, in the Congregation of the Contemplatives of the Globe. "I was very pleased when I discovered this name. These nuns hadn't set foot on the "globe" until their Order was no longer forced to remain inside their enclosure. They meditate inside their Convent of the Cold Lands, curiously situated in the south of France. And where nothing ever happens". Unsullied by any experience, Sister Solange brings to the world a regard that is both naïve and extremely clear-sighted. "It cannot be called false naivety. In the beginning, sister Solange is really naive".

She's talking about globalisation
"But, as her travels continue, she is no longer naïve at all. She's like a baby which grows up in 48 hours." The missions entrusted to her by Bishop André Leclerc, a complex, ambiguous character, lead her and her assistant, Sister Lucie, to the poorest countries on the planet. In Venezuela and Nicaragua, they are confronted with all the misery of the countries of the South. In the Ukraine, they discover a country disfigured by the catastrophe of Chernobyl. Sister Solange immediately comes to a painful realization. But, with his sense of ironic distance, Bruno Boëglin suddenly turns the play into a spy novel. For the CIA and the Vatican, Sister Solange has become dangerous. "What she has discovered about the world has made her an undesirable person. In one of her monologues, she speaks of neo-liberalism. She doesn't express herself with modern words, with our words. She speaks with her own language. But she's talking about globalisation. That's what terrifies her."

Losing the feeling of security
For Sister Solange, going out into the world also means losing the feeling of security, of a totally protected environment. Returning to the convent is difficult. "When Sister Solange and Sister Lucie return from Caracas, the convent is deserted. There is an impression of desolation. The Christmas tree has not been taken down. It has lost its needles and its decorations." At this point, Sister Solange is assailed by doubt. " She doubts her ability to go out into the world. She asks the Lord, "Why didn't you give me the keys? I'm not prepared well enough for these missions." I like this. There aren't many people like Sister Solange who say, "I know nothing." But one of the consequences of doubt is the loss of faith. "All religious people, in literature as in life, can experience moments of doubt. The greatest saints are those who have the most doubted God. But what she has seen, what she has heard, has had such an impact on her, that Sister Solange is unable to struggle against it. Bishop Leclerc also has his moments of doubt. But for him, it's not the same kind of doubt. He is on the outside. He is a socialite, a politician. Sister Solange is a hollow character but with charisma. She's a talker. She cannot stand the vacuity of conversations. Let us flee like Sister Solange from the vacuity of conversations. Today's world is totally confused. As for me, for example, I have nothing more to say about the world."

On the tightrope between the comic and the tragic
In the writing of his play, Bruno Boëglin is always on the tightrope between the comic and the tragic: "Solange being as she is, for me, she has to die. If she dies, it's from having seen that the Earth is filled with seven billion bastards who live in their own excrement and who are more and more numerous." He wrote "les Aventures de soeur Solange" after suffering a stroke. "I already had the idea. But writing the play was dragging on a little. I was planning to leave for Nicaragua to work. I had the stroke a few days before my departure. So I retired to the country and wrote. It worked out well ... If I hadn't had the stroke, it would not have been the same. Perhaps also I came close to death. I don't know. I can't talk about that at all. But I totally understand Sister Lucie when she prays to the Lord saying, "I don't want to go there any more". Sister Lucie doesn't want to go there. I'm a bit like her. If I could block my ears and eyes, I would." This is the first time that Bruno Boëglin, author, director and actor, has really written a play for the theatre. "Before, they were monologues or adaptations of novels. This is my first real play. In my opinion, it will be the last. I don't want to write a play and direct it any more." In "les Aventures de soeur Solange", the action is fast and efficient. Bruno Boëglin goes straight to the heart of the matter. "That's from having re-read the last notes of our friend Koltès. In the end, he said, "You have to delete all the stage directions. Go straight to the point. "

We have to make people laugh even about serious things
"We have to make people laugh even about serious things." "This is true. I said to myself, be brief. Get rid of everything that's not useful." What is also very well done is that Bruno Boëglin makes us travel and live the extraordinary adventures of Sister Solange in faraway countries without us ever leaving the convent. There is Sister Solange's monologue spoken in her cell. And yet, we can see snow falling. "For me, this is an internal monologue. We're in the convent and we're inside Sister Solange's head. It's not like a prayer. These are thoughts. And I found nothing better than to make it snow inside. There is nothing to explain."

An ultimate pirouette
At the very end, when we are still suffering the shock of the double tragedy, Bruno Boëglin allows himself an ultimate pirouette with the arrival of a young postulant, Justine. "All plays end when the heroine or the hero dies. But I didn't like this desperate and despairing side. Two deaths in a row because the world is ugly, I said to myself that the audience and I, we don't deserve that. Justine's arrival is a little like thumbing my nose at religion. It could be Justine or de Sade's Juliette. This little postulant, no-one knows what havoc she'll wreak in the convent. No-one knows."

Chantal Boiron