Charles Meder, the man who dances with words

The play takes place in the not-too-distant future, in a slightly run-down hairdressing salon. Three armchairs are arranged in front of a reinforced mirror. Sitting in the armchair on the left is a window mannequin with a wig, under a salon hair dryer. Long hair - whether blonde, brown, red, black, it clearly doesn't matter. The mannequin is still, lifeless. We hear music. The bell on the door rings. Urd takes to the stage. She inspects the hair salon, sits down on a stool next to a sink, looks around, waits, gets up, walks over to the radio, changes the station, listens, shakes her head, then puts on her hairdresser's outfit, applies her make-up, puts on a wig, looks at herself in a hand-held mirror, gets up, rushes over to one of the inflatable mannequins, puts the mannequin in one of the chairs, and begins to act out what she experienced in this hair salon a few years earlier...

And so begins the play "Urd. Pièce multilingue pour un coupable, sa victime, un mannequin de vitrine, plusieurs mannequins gonflables et le public" for which Charles Meder won the first prize of the "adult authors" of the National Literary Competition 2024. 

Humour with bite

An ordinary setting, a run-down hairdressing salon, a lifeless mannequin, a reinforced mirror: the atmosphere is both strange and worthy of a David Lynch film. The scene is perfectly staged in an innocuous location, creating an atmosphere that verges on the mysterious and surreal.

Charles Meder is renowned for his thought-provoking plays about society and human psychology. But what is he trying to tell us through the character of Urd who lives in this banal world? The jury of the National Literary Competition 2024 was clearly impressed. The author won the prize for "the originality of the dialogue-monologue form, which makes it a play for actors. The protagonist is given a playground to showcase his acting and theatrical skills, where situational comedy meets a note of satirical humour."

Paraphrasing the words of the jury, the playwright invites the audience to become a genuine actor in the play, which "unfolds against a gritty and bitter backdrop and develops into a violent settling of scores with contemporary Luxembourg society. The actor displays a complex duality and makes use of political, social and linguistic clichés by switching from one language to another in a natural way."

Let's hear directly from the author himself. In an interview, he answers our questions about his play, ‘Urd. Pièce multilingue pour un coupable, sa victime, un mannequin de vitrine, plusieurs mannequins gonflables et le public" and the prize he has just received.