L’humour noir, la dérision et l’absurde sont ici au rendez-vous
Bienvenue dans le monde imaginaire de Beau gars où les femmes s’arrogent sans vergogne tous les rôles de pouvoir. Politiciennes, chasseuses, reines, policières, elles sont partout et dominent toutes les sphères de la société. Sur scène, trois narratrices passent au hachoir les univers de films et de séries télévisées, commentant avec un humour décapant les actions de leurs héroïnes fictives, tout en gardant à l’œil un beau gars à moitié nu, homme-objet maintenu à disposition.
Beautiful Man d’Erin Shields, traduite ici par Olivier Sylvestre, est une satire engagée, adroite et jouissive qui renverse les rôles et transfère de manière déconcertante les discours et les comportements stéréotypés pour mieux les révéler. Beau gars s’attaque joyeusement à tout ce qui est toxique et insidieusement entretenu par la culture populaire, opérant un changement radical dans la manière dont on se raconte les histoires.
ERIN SHIELDS IS A GENIUS I'M FROTHING AT THE FUCKING MOUTH
beautiful man: three women discussing a recent movie they saw, and the wonderful male characters that the director took such care to represent with ~depth~ and ~importance~ and, of course, sex appeal. flipped-oppression stories don't usually work for me, but erin shields' cutting sense of humor makes it work--this goes way beyond "what if... women... were mean to MEN instead" to offer up a searingly ironic look at how women are depicted in media and how that reflects onto real life. so many lines that made me suck in my breath, or laugh but with a tint of bitterness. (my one criticism of this one is that there were a few lines that seemed to tilt into bioessentialism--blah blah men are naturally stronger than women etc etc in a way that left a weird taste in my mouth.)
JENNIFER The director wants us to wait a few episodes to get to know the importance of the male characters.
SOPHIE The director, I hear, I hear she did a lot of research.
JENNIFER Yes, a lot of historical research.
SOPHIE And scientific too.
PAM She also talked to a psychologist who's an expert in these types of things.
JENNIFER They're making a documentary about all the research she did.
SOPHIE And she travelled too. She had interns all over.
PAM Oh, I heard about the interns.
JENNIFER Why didn't they speak out sooner, that's my only question.
unit b-1717: a woman tries to clean out her storage locker and is swept up in memories. this one took a little while to work on me, but when i got into it, man, was i into it. deeply concerned with embodiment and physicality and the ways people disappear when they take others' feelings upon their shoulders.
I was taught to be scared of the night. That women disappear at night. Women go missing at night. Women don't make it home when they walk alone at night, but that assumes all women want to appear. That all women intend to be found.
and then there was you: a monologue from a mother to her growing child. can't talk about this because despite my communist transsexual anti-nuclear family leanings stuff about parent/child relationships will reliably make me bawl like a baby and if i think too hard about this one i'll lose it
anyway i need to read every erin shields play ever written
Play #3 done! Technically there were three plays in total but somehow that feels like cheating. Thanks for lending me this play Abby! I am definitely loving this Erin Sheilds kick I’m on.