SIMONE AND EDITH

I started to write my play. A great deal has been written about Edith Piaf, and my aim was to bring forward some of the lesser known aspects of her life. She is known for her many affairs with men, but she also attracted the loyalty of women friends who supported and worked with her throughout her career. She was accompanied for much of her life by Simone Berteaut who sometimes claimed to be her half-sister. And she was investigated, at the end of WW2, for collaboration with the forces of the Occupation. The ambiguities inherent in this last aspect of her story seemed to me to provide the basis for an intriguing play.

All of this was in the plan. What I hadn’t planned for, however, was that the strident, unapologetic voice of Simone Berteaut would impose itself more and more as the writing progressed, bringing her own take on the legend that Piaf created around herself. A series of short monologues came into being, in which the voice of Simone, malicious and affectionate, jealous and proud, tells us her side of the story.

Simone is largely ignored by biographers; in Piaf’s own biography she is not mentioned at all. But in my play, she simply refused to take a minor role.