The Years Playtext

by Annie Ernaux, Aline Arbo and Stephanie Bain

She strikes a pose and the camera shutter clicks... A child playing in the debris of the Second World War. Click. A student discovering parties and men’s bodies. Click. An activist fighting for the right to choose. Click. A wife picking out a velvet sofa. Click. A mother taking her eldest to judo. Click. A lover, seducing a younger man. Click. A grandmother presenting her granddaughter to the camera. Click.

The Years/Les années is Annie Ernaux’s critically acclaimed ‘masterpiece’ (Guardian), charting a woman’s personal and political life against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war Europe.

Eline Arbo’s inventive stage adaptation was premiered as De jaren by Het Nationale Theater in The Hague, Netherlands, in 2022. It was first performed, in an English- language version by Stephanie Bain – after the translations by Alison L. Strayer and Tanya Leslie – at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2024, with a cast of five women collectively bringing to life the story of one woman, and a whole continent.

Annie Ernaux is a French writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2022. Eline Arbo is Artistic Director of Internationaal Theater Amsterdam. Stephanie Bain is Head of Programming and Literary at the Almeida Theatre.