Caged writing

A playwright in search of inspiration for a drama about pandas has spent much of the last week in a cage in a zoo in northern France.

Norbert Aboudarham, 57, has spent 10 hours a day since Thursday in a cage in Amiens Zoo writing The Panda's Flea.

He has had with raccoons, red pandas and wolves, among other fauna, for neighbours.

His work is the third in a series about animals which he began in 2002.

Aboudarham's cage is furnished with a bale of straw and a log on which he perches. He does, however, have a laptop computer hooked up to a mobile phone.

He declines to talk to the public and communicates by way of messages passed through the bars.

He says to write "about the universe, you have to put yourself in a cage smaller than the universe".

"This experiment magnifies characteristics. For example aggressive visitors become a bit more irascible," he said. "I am exhausted because I get a lot of requests. It is much more tiring than I thought."

According to Christine Morrier of Amiens Zoo, a former director of a cultural centre, the experiment is a way of "questioning man about his belonging to nature".

"For the animals it makes no difference at all, In any case they are used to the people who look after them," she said.

She says that Aboudarham, whose stint ends Thursday, has drawn many sightseers.