Tudo A Que Se Chama Nada consists of two plays by Nathalie Sarraute: Por tudo e por nada and Aqui está ela. It came from the wish to place the word at the centre of the action, the word as an “agent provocateur” that suggests several options between what is named, its significance and significant, but also what cannot be named. The unspeakable, so dear to Beckett, was also explored by Sarraute, who penned a word for it – tropisme/tropism, which she borrowed from the exact sciences. Defined as the imperceptible movement made by certain plants according to changes in their environment, in Saurrate’s work it is defined by the manifestation of linguistic expressions and conventions and of the underground banality of those clichéd narratives. In her plays, the characters’ verbiage, lacking apparent meaning or sense, reveals an interior and unconscious movement – like the one of plants – which translates hidden human feelings. In both plays, characters obsessively analyse their words to the point of paroxysm. Por tudo e por nada introduces two men whose friendship is nearly ended because of one sentence; in Aqui está ela, a man is upset by the possibility that a woman was left with the wrong impression about him. The combination of these two plays accentuates wordplay at its most splendid, within the apparent and superficial “Nothing” which the characters inhabit.