Nous, les héros

When they leave the stage, backstage, the actors in the troupe begin their lives again, their real lives. They're themselves again, or so they want to believe.
Like every night, all these last few years, it hasn't gone so well. They're tired, exhausted, disappointed with the life they lead and maybe they should give up or move to bigger cities to try, again, without the others, a new adventure. But we're celebrating an important event, and this evening is a special one. The eldest daughter of the patrons of the troupe will be engaged backstage to the young leading man at the end of act one. She'll marry him, they'll be theater managers, they'll play the company's repertoire, against all the odds of life, the poorly heated hotels, the small, aggressive staff of provincial village halls and the snide indifference of the public and the imbecilic children.
Tomorrow, we'll run away, but tonight again, we're just pretending, since we don't know how to do anything else. (Jean-Luc Lagarce)