Rock River Players present Jean Genet’s edgy, surrealist drama The Maids, the first two weekends in November in Williamsville, then in Brattleboro.
French dramatist Genet originally wrote The Maids in 1947, though he had changed the ending in subsequent iterations. It’s since been produced widely across Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, on film, and even on Danish television with a range of casts: all male, mixed genders, and all female.
In the story, according to director Jon Mack, “Claire and Solange — sisters and household servants — are trapped in a life in which they are debased by their mistress, “Madame.” They are so dominated that they feel their very identity is being erased. With no life of their own, their misery provokes acts of desperation.”
Mack writes in production notes that the 75-minute piece “is an intriguing, emotion-filled, highly theatrical play of intense emotional interactions: love and hate, domination and subjugation, desire and revulsion, exaltation and despair, sanity and madness, murder and suicide. It fascinates in part because of the room it offers for creative experimentation,” says Mack, who himself played the role of Madame in a Brattleboro production a dozen years ago. “It gives us a glimpse into the dark world where one person’s superiority of position in the social order allows them to crush others to the point that they feel their very identity is threatened. They are being erased as human beings. As a microcosm of the world we live in today, it brings to the fore the human devastation that subjugation engenders.”
As Martin Esslin notes in his seminal text, The Theatre of the Absurd, Genet’s “plays are concerned with expressing his own feeling of helplessness and solitude when confronted with the despair and loneliness of man caught in the hall of mirrors of the human condition, inexorably trapped by an endless progression of images that are merely his own distorted reflection — lies covering lies, fantasies battening upon fantasies, nightmares nourished by nightmares within nightmares.”
Thus The Maids plays with audience expectations, Mack observes: “Set in a dream-like boudoir, this short play takes us through unexpected twists and turns as the drama unfolds.”
Mack adds that he is “delighted to be doing this project under the aegis of RRP which produces an impressive range of theatrical work. And I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to work with Rebecca Cross, Julie Holland and Adrienne Major—three talented and committed women who bring Genet’s drama to life.”
Mack was assisted with production details by Jenny Holan, Amy Donahue and Bahman Mahdavi; lighting is by Peter Broussard and Jay Gelter; costumes by Belle Coles, and set by Jay Gelter.
The Maids, suitable for audiences age 16 and over.
PERFORMANCES:
Friday November 1 and Saturday November 2, 7:30PM
at the Williamsville Hall, Williamsville VT
Friday November 8 and Saturday November 9, 7:30PM
at the Hooker-Dunham Theater, Brattleboro VT
Admission is $15, general; $12 for students and seniors.
Questions? info@rockriverplayers.org.
Rock River Players presents ‘The Maids’
The Commons (10/22/2024)
A Conversation with Jon Mack
The Commons (11/06/2024)
