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The First Sunday

A comedy in four acts

  • Historical
  • Comedy
  • 8-character play
  • 5 women, 2 men, 1 either
  • 75 min
  • Intermediate
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Synopsis

April 1945. In Bellegrange, women will vote on Sunday for the first time, and the mayor’s list carries ten men’s names, five of whom are still prisoners in Germany. At the wash-house, the women get it into their heads that one of their own could sit on the village council: Louise, who has run her farm for five years. They will have to write the ballots by hand, find paper, stand up to the mayor, and above all dare, alone in the polling booth, to leave her own name on the paper.

Bellegrange, a village in the Nièvre, in central France: the wash-house, the grocery, a farm kitchen, the schoolroom that serves as the polling station, on Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 April 1945.

Casting

767 lines
  • LOUISE Female role, Adult 39, has run the Mercier farm alone since her husband, Paul, was taken prisoner in Germany.
  • AUGUSTINE Female role, Senior 71 (admits to 65), washerwoman at the village wash-house for fifty years, widowed since 1916.
  • SIMONE Female role, Adult 47, the grocer, whose husband is also a prisoner.
  • LUCIE Female role, Young adult 20, Simone’s daughter; she will be old enough to vote in June.
  • AGATHE Female role, Senior 68, the mayor’s wife.
  • CLAUDE No gender marker, Adult thirties, runs the post office, the telegraph and the only telephone in the village.
  • ARMAND Male role, Senior 67, mayor of Bellegrange since 1925.
  • VICTOR Male role, Adult 34, Paul’s brother, sent home from the stalag in March on medical grounds; he sleeps at the farm.

Contents

  1. Act One : The Wash-House
    • Scene 1
    • Scene 2
    • Scene 3
  2. Act Two : The Grocery
    • Scene 1
    • Scene 2
    • Scene 3
    • Scene 4
  3. Act Three : The Night
    • Scene 1
    • Scene 2
    • Scene 3
    • Scene 4
  4. Act Four : The Schoolroom
    • Scene 1
    • Scene 2
    • Scene 3
    • Scene 4

Excerpt

Act One : The Wash-House

Scene 1

(The village wash-house, a Saturday morning. The sound of running water. Augustine scrubs a sheet on the stone. Simone arrives with a basket of washing.)

SIMONE

You’re here already.

AUGUSTINE

I’m always here already. It’s the wash-house that turns up after me.

SIMONE

Is there any ash left?

AUGUSTINE

In the bucket. Not too much, it’s mine. That soap from your shop, I washed a sheet with it, and the sheet came out dirtier.

SIMONE

It’s the soap they deliver. I don’t make it.

762 more lines, 19 scenes

The rest is waiting in the file.

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