Bal Trap by Xavier DUrringer

Lulu and Gino are coming back to the place where they first met in order to get their love back. They’re lost and they don’t know what happened to them. Everyday life has killed love. Muso and Bubble are meeting for the first time, hesitant between their desire to discover each other and the fear of risking and losing. Words in Bal Trap are sharp and violent. The language of the play is direct, crude, and very realistic. And the rhythm makes most of the play a comedy.

Xavier Durringer

Xavier Durringer was born in 1963 in Paris. He is now one of the most important playwrights in France. His work has been translated into seven languages. In London, Mark Ravenhill’s translation of A Desire to Kill on the Tip of the Tongue was produced in 1997 at the Royal Court. Other credits include: La nuit à l’envers (Comédie Française), La Quille (National Theatre of Strasbourg), and Surfeurs (Avignon International Festival). He also directed Oh Pardon, tu dormais, a play written and played by Jane Birkin. Now a successful film director, he also directed La Nage indienne, La Conquete about Nicolas Sarkozy, and Ne m’abandonne pas for French television. Bal Trap is one of his earliest plays. Bal Trap was translated into seven languages and toured all around the world, except in the UK: It has never been translated nor performed in English before.

Xavier Durringer passed away from a heart attack in Paris in October 2025.

Exchange Theatre’s Artistic Director first met him in Paris while securing the rights to Bal Trap. During that visit, Xavier invited him into the editing room of La Conquête, his feature film about former French president Nicolas Sarkozy. He later travelled to London to present the film at the Institut Français and personally invited David to the UK premiere.

Our rehearsal studio, The Trap, takes its name from Bal Trap—and, ultimately, from Xavier himself. It stands as a tribute to his work, his generosity, and the foundation he laid in our artistic journey.

The Realism

In Bal Trap, the situation is very simple: a couple is at the edge of breaking up and another one is meeting for the first time. The play is short, only following four characters. It is sharp, simple, and realistic. The production has already been workshoped and conceived as a situation which could happen out of a stage: in a pub, in a ware-house… The situation is your venue. The story is happening exactly where the performance is taking place, so the characters are real characters from the street. They are real people dealing with irrational feelings, desperate for their love, their expectations, and their loss.

We wanted to break boundaries with the audience and the stage. The action takes place among the audience. This creates a new spontaneity and a bigger than life effect. The play also gave us the opportunity to investigate the use of live music integrated into the show, with a guitarist playing live throughout the piece to underline emotions. It’s striking and it brings theatre back to real people.