A STORY WHICH IS SIMPLE AND YET AS UNIVERSAL AS FOOTBALL

This is just a draft story. It needs to be elaborated and refined during the writing workshops which will start our residency in South Africa.

A young girl and a young boy love each other passionately. Alas, their two families have been enemies for many years (similar to the Montaigu and Capulet families in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet or to the O’Timmins and O’Haras in Morris’ Lucky Luke).

Neither of the two families wants to hear a word about this potential union, and this romance keeps fuelling the existing animosity opposing the two clans. They end up face to face, endowed for a while with animal heads. When the confrontation appears to be unavoidable, with the puppets gesticulating, threatening and insulting one another, the two lovers intervene and place a football in the centre, between the two families. T-shirts are distributed and put on the puppets, and the match begins: from the crawling baby to the grandfather in his wheelchair, all the members of the families are taking part.

The lovers’ friends play the role of umpires. The puppets dribble, pass and shoot the ball, the game being complicated by the fantasies of a whimsical ball. Suddenly, the ball disappears: one can clearly see that another kind of ball is coming, the young maiden is… pregnant! The match turns into a wedding procession.