Théâtre de l'Accalmie : "Paysan hors contrôle"

The play takes place between 2010 and 2020... Jeff, a farmer in his fifties, gets off his big tractor to satisfy a natural need. He takes the opportunity to admire his machine (the tractor!!!) and gives the audience a long monologue on the evolution of equipment and his profession.
Then Maxence Peuvottin, a controller of "various and sundry bonuses", arrives in his little red car. If at the beginning, Jeff takes the control a bit jokingly, the controller's punctiliousness, zeal and the inconsistency of certain obligations and controls by themselves, raise the tension between the farmer and the controller. And it is not the two short visits of Josette, Jeff's wife, that will make things better...
Through a play that is above all intended to be funny, the author wanted to show what agriculture had become in his last years as a farmer, with the vital dependence of the farmer on European premiums. Nevertheless, if the criticism of the European bureaucracy and the absurdity of certain controls are clearly visible in this play, the peasant class, which knows how to make the most of this system and would not want to give it up for anything in the world, and the argument of the "poor little peasant who works 365 days a year to earn nothing" do not come out of this play completely unscathed.
Two totally opposed and irreconcilable logics clash.
Far from the "Bodin's" and the caricature of the average yokel or the miserabilism of certain fictions on the profession of farmer, this play is intended to be a testimony to the world of agriculture, as it was in the years 2010-2020. Most of the things mentioned, whether for the farmer or the controller, are, unfortunately, part of the author's own experience and come from real situations.

Jean-Charles COUGNY

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