Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man

by V (formerly Eve Ensler)

In Eve Ensler's "Floating Rhoda And The Glue Man" time and space are playfully elastic. As Rhoda and her lover, Barn, attempt to make contact in this tender and funny love story, they frequently float away from their "stand-in" selves and watch their own scenes with bemused detachment, or freeze their stand-ins for a moment while they speculatively play out a fantasy encounter. A comedy of sexual manners—hetero, homo, and bi—a satire on the gender wars in '90s America, where everybody wants to claim victim status, "Floating Rhoda" celebrates lovers, and the messy, earthbound struggle that is loving.
~ intro by Liz Diamond from "Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 1993" edt. Marisa Smith

In my late 30's I fell in love with a gentle man. To my surprise, I realized then that for all my supposed liberation and openness, I was essentially terrified of a kind, available man. I was terrified of being seen, terrified of being touched. His tenderness ripped open big aching wounds and desires.
It is very late in the 20th century. We are caught, women and men, in this wild zone of gender mystification. Each of us longing, (sometimes secretly, sometimes unconsciously) to break out of one sexual assumption or another. Each of us desperately wanting to connect, to discover what we're really feeling, and then, to go beyond fear.
"Floating Rhoda And The Glue Man" demands that we unlock our private and limited notions of sexual identity and love. That we embrace a world where women rediscover their softness by kissing another woman's lips, where men refuse to participate in violence because they crave connection. Where each of us speaks what is there raging beneath the mask and loneliness, so that we are able finally to be still with one another, and not float away.
~ Eve Ensler, Author's Note

40 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1994

About the author

V is an internationally bestselling author and an award-winning playwright whose works include The Vagina Monologues, The Good Body, Insecure at Last, and I Am an Emotional Creature, since adapted for the stage as Emotional Creature. She is the founder of V-Day, the global movement to end violence against women and girls, which has raised more than $90 million for local groups and activists, and inspired the global action One Billion Rising. V lives in Paris and New York City.

Reviews

[Molly G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Profoundly mixed feelings. But fantastically designed/conceived, esp. staging the central concept.