The Girl on the Sofa

A girl sits on a sofa, not knowing what to do with herself. She argues with her mother and envies her older sister. She also longs for her absent father, a seaman. A middle-aged woman paints a portrait of herself as a young girl, sitting on a sofa, but she’s beginning to doubt her artistic ability. Still at odds with her sister and her mother and haunted by her dead father, she’s unable to shake the continuing presence of the past in her life...

Jon Fosse’s new play, and this English version by David Harrower, were commissioned by the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh.

Jon Fosse’s work includes novels, poetry, essays and books for children. He is one of the most produced playwrights in Europe and his plays have been translated into more than forty languages. Oberon Books publishes Plays One (Someone Is Going to Come, The Name, The Guitar Man, The Child), Plays Three (Mother and Child, Sleep my Baby Sleep, Afternoon, Beautiful, Death Variations), Plays Four (And We’ll Never Be Parted, The Son, Visits, Meanwhile the Lights Go Down and Everything Becomes Black), Plays Five (Suzannah, Living Secretly, The Dead Dogs, A Red Butterfly’s Wing, Warm, Telemakos, Sleep), Nightsongs, The Girl on the Sofa and I Am The Wind. Fosse was made a Chevalier of the Ordre national du Merite of France in 2007 and received The International Ibsen Award in 2010.