In the Solitude of Cotton Fields (Dans la solitude des champs de coton) ,a two-character play by the French dramatist and writer Bernard-Marie Koltès is now on its Asian tour and will be staged in Hangzhou this month at Hangzhou Xixi Heaven Art Center.

Koltès was best known for his plays La Nuit juste avant les Forêts (The Night Just Before the Forests, 1976), Sallinger (1977) and Dans la Solitude des Champs de Coton (In the Solitude of Cotton Fields, 1986).

At the time of his death, Koltès was considered to be one of the most influential young voices in French theatre, and heir apparent to the legacy left by post-war playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Genet. His plays have since become staples on the modern repertory around the world, having been translated into more than 36 languages.

The play is performed in one act without intermission. Its two characters are nameless and identified as the Client and the Dealer. The author's instructions do not mention the location and time of day.

The exchanges between the two characters are crafted to avoid specifics and the audience remains unaware of the subject of their negotiations, though it is clear that the stakes are high. They appear to encounter one another by chance when the Dealer approaches the Client with an offer: "Tell me what you want that I can supply, and I will supply it." In the exchanges that follow they at times argumentative, even threatening, and often deliver lengthy monologues to one another. The conversation is intense, includes "animal imagery and oblique, hostile warnings," and has been described as "high-octane, sexually charged."

The audience, in the words of one critic, is invited to consider: "Who are these characters with their talk of light and darkness, life and death, goodness and evil, peace and war? Are they individuals, social classes, races, nations? Is the deal life itself and the Client's walk life's journey? Is the Dealer's offer not sex or illicit substances but the promise and peril of human existence, a transaction that carries with it an inescapable conclusion?"

Ticket price: 160/260/360/460 yuan

Time: 19:30, Dec.14, 14:30, Dec.15