The Bit-Players

by José Sanchis Sinisterra (Spain)
For a large cast!

UK and English-language premiere: Southwark Playhouse, London, 1 September 2022: see promo clip here

The stage is set in a majestic hall for a classical drama of grandiose proportions. Courtesans and conspirators, prisoners and postulants, humble villagers and noble ladies wait in their dozens in the wings. Will the archduke survive a plot against him? Do his guests at the banquet hide a treacherous secret? Will the novice nun fulfil her holy orders? The audience take their seats in keen anticipation. The spear-wielding guards await their lord’s bombastic entrance. And… wait some more. So begins the farce of an uprising gone wrong. Tired of being cast in roles of little significance, the ‘padding and parades’ thrust on the lowly background artiste, the bit-players in their numbers have taken matters into their own hands: the protagonists are locked in their dressing rooms, the punters are locked inside the auditorium, and the props store is being plundered even as the curtain rises. Revolution has finally arrived. If only they’d made a plan about what to do next…

Penned by José Sanchis Sinisterra, one of Spain’s most influential of the 20th and 21st Century, The Bit-Players opened in Valencia in 1989, when Spain’s contemporary democracy was a mere decade old. Translated into English for the first time for the Southwark Playhouse in 2022, this hilarious comedy belies a political truth as relevant today as it ever was. Taking power is one thing; working out what to do with it is quite another.

I’d like to do a monologue in this play… if it is a play. A monologue, yes: where you come out onstage on your own and make a long speech without anyone interrupting you. I always dreamed of doing a monologue. And I still do: I almost always dream in monologues. But I’ve got a niggling feeling that I’m only talking here to fill the time… I mean, like I don’t really have anything to say, and someone’s just put me here to fill a gap… I don’t know if I’m making sense. It’s quite a coincidence, I think, that just when everyone else has gone and the stage is left empty, that I should appear here, as if by chance, and start making a long speech… if this is a speech. Of course, they take advantage of the fact that I’d like to do a monologue and they bring it out just when there’s no one else onstage… And what’s a fella to do? He’s not gonna pass up a chance like this, so he starts blathering on as if he really were doing a monologue… Because a man’s not stupid… No one’s gonna make me believe this is a monologue… No: this is a device to prevent the stage from being left empty while something’s happening back there. Because then, you’ll see, once whatever has to happen back there has happened, someone will give me a kick and leave me with the words still in my mouth, and goodbye and good—

This translation of The Bit-Players was commissioned by the Southwark Playhouse for the UK premiere production performed by the Southwark Playhouse Young Company, directed by Sergio Maggiolo and Pepa Duarte, on 1 September 2022.