Creating an Unreal World

Now, almost two months since I viewed the performance, the aspects of it that stick with me most are the the design elements. I can still see clearly what Ms. Ziska described as “the big red box containing a smaller red box of food and sex.” The themes are still muddled to me, as they were on the night of the performance. I remember a fellow theater goer exclaiming to us young women's student that “You cannot have it all.” I still bristle at the sentiment, but perhaps that is the lie I must believe to continue my post college life?

These are the quotes I scribbled down in the darkened theater during the performance and my thoughts on them:

“There are two things a woman must understand in this life: loneliness and money.”

This quote was the one that hurt me most. It is in the same vein as the “you can't have it all” sentiment. Women must conquer these two obstacles to become successful in their own right. I was struck by how much this logic echoed my own thoughts. Will I be strong enough to remain lonely for a cause I am passionate about?

“Men aren't afraid of women, just women in groups.”

As a former women's college student, this quote rang especially true to me. Observe many non-native attendees of our social functions for more detail.

“I hate these feeble minded individuals.”

“Well then, you hate women.”

This quote typifies so well the sort of academic/intellectual/class/racial elitism of which first and second-wave feminism has been accused of. Again, another fear of a bryn mawr grad: has my education distanced me from my family background?

These others I found striking, but they seem to stand on their own.

“The bonds between women are laughable to the world, but they are marriages.”

“Why men call women's logic impaired, I'll never know.”

“You are my talisman against death.”

After the show, I wrote simply “I wish they had pushed harder.” During the discussion, I was disappointed that neither Ms. Ziska nor Mr. Bilderback jumped at the chance to dub the play “feminist.” I think the production could have benefited from a more considered study of the feminist themes contained within it. As a third generation artist, I disagreed with Mr. Bilderback's assertion that art should not have an explicitly political theme. The work of feminist scholars, or any scholar for that matter, can do nothing but deepen the dramatic palate of a theatrical endeavor. The ending played as quite dark, sex-negative and, well, predictable (by all means, punish the promiscuous young woman and highlight the survivors' borderline irrational expectation of institutional change). I understand, of course, that audience members and even members of the show will have a variety of interpretations of its content. However, I still think the play would have benefited from an interpretation that focused more on the tensions between the history of feminism and its present incarnations, reveling in the complexities occurring in the moral minds of each immediate audience member instead of clinging to the tropes of the imagined time period. The genius I hoped for in this unreality was its potential to fully sculpt a beautifully entertaining and emotional landscape that could fully illustrate the tensions between certain themes. However, the overobtrusive, unsurprising delivered thoughtspeak made me feel as though I were watching the asubtlely of an allegory instead of the rich nuances of an unreal world.