Internationally-renowned artistes Jean-Paul Sermadiras and Souleymane Sanogo enthralled the audience by their fabulous performance in the French drama ‘In the Solitude of Cotton Fields’ on Sunday. Alliance Française de Dhaka (AFD) arranged the theatrical performance at the Experimental Theatre Hall of at Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy (BSA) on the evening. ‘In the Solitude of Cotton Fields’ depicts the story of a client and a dealer. The author’s instructions do not mention the location and time of day of the drama. 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.