(L’Hiver sous la table, 1994) by renowned French playwright Roland Topor is an absurdist comedy about immigration. The production is directed by Belarusian theatre director Uladzimir Ushakou, who was forced into exile from his home country.

"Each of us has our own table, our own story."

The play tells the story of Florence, a young French translator of existentialist literature, who rents out the space beneath her desk to Dragomir, a quiet and modest immigrant with no home. What happens when your homeland no longer exists, and a new life begins—quite literally—under the table?

The performance raises the question: how do we bring people from under the table to a seat at it?

At once poetic and raw, tender and absurd, even fairytale-like, Winter Under the Table is a story about migration, hope, and love.

A sensation in Paris and awarded six Molière Awards, the play takes on new shades in Helsinki: northern minimalism (with a hint of Kaurismäki-esque tone) meets eastern passion, resulting in a distinctive blend of irony, poetry, and playfulness.

In Ushakou’s interpretation, Topor’s play becomes a tragicomic farce where everyone has their own table—and their own perspective on life.

ULADZIMIR USHAKOU is a Belarusian theatre director with a long career, who was forced to flee his home city of Minsk, where he ran his own theatre (the Belarusian Contemporary Art Theatre). As a political refugee, he was granted asylum in Helsinki in 2022 through the Artists at Risk residency programme.

ROLAND TOPOR (1938–1997) was a French writer, illustrator, cartoonist, actor, and animator—a multidisciplinary artist. His best-known works include the novel The Tenant (1964), later adapted into a film by Roman Polanski in 1976, and the play Winter Under the Table (1994), which received six Molière Awards in Paris in 2004. Topor’s Polish-Jewish parents fled persecution from Warsaw to France in the 1930s.

HELSINKI 98 is a theatre collective founded in 2023, exploring the question: “What can art be after 24 February 2022?”

Text: Roland Topor (L’Hiver sous la table, 1994)
Finnish translation: Martti-Tapio Kuuskoski

Cast:
Florence Michalon – Taisiya Kostyuk
Dragomir – Jaakko Kiljunen
Gritzka – Maksim Pavlenko
Raymonde Pouce – Veera Anttila
Marc Thyl – Ilkka Lampi

Director: Uladzimir Ushakou
Set design, video, lighting, poster: Pavel Semchenko
Costumes, makeup, stage management: Anis Kronidova
Sound design, music: Samuli Kivelä
Choreography: Ilkka Lampi

Production and marketing: HELSINKI 98