How should a woman take to the stage? This question permeates a number of plays at this year’s Fringe, shining a spotlight on women, their bodies, and the powers which seek to bind them.
“Red Like Fruit is about one Gen X woman’s reckoning with her personal history in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Lauren’s thinking through a series of sexual episodes that happened in her teens,” says playwright Hannah Moscovitch. Playing at the Traverse, Red Like Fruit follows Lauren as she reflects on the difference between trauma and experience, after asking Luke to narrate her life. In this dual narration, Moscovitch rejects simple answers; consent and complicity are often not so disparate.
To control and be controlled: Blind Faith Theatre’s I See You Watching likewise unpacks this gendered dynamic. Kylie Westerbeck plays a woman attempting to survive the incessant directions of a male MC, delighting in her distress. For Westerbeck, this is a dynamic she knows too well: “I have found myself in recent years surrendering to men’s expectations of an ideal woman and I’ve simply had enough.” Taking such experiences to an eagerly meta stage, Westerbeck uncovers the weighted realities of womanhood (and its performances) under misogyny. “I See You Watching is a reflection of me and all of the women who were raised to perform under these expectations. Who were taught that their worthiness as a woman is dependent on satisfying the male gaze.”
Such contemporary expectations have their historical antecedents. In The City For Incurable Women, international theatre company fish in a dress brings us to the Salpêtrière Hospital, an 1880s Parisian women’s psychiatric hospital, in which the patients were forced to perform ‘hysteria’ to the public. “At the Salpêtrière, the ‘Hysterical Woman’ became a public sensation: hair down, back arched, white nightie. Tracing to today, we still love seeing ‘crazy women’, love calling women crazy,” says fish in a dress. Medical misogyny refuses to loosen its grip on history – and hysteria is simply one of its many prized possessions. The company continues: “These performances became infamous – audiences flocked to see women hypnotised, holding extreme poses, screaming over invisible snakes.” Drawing on such performances as inspiration, fish in a dress uncovers how abusive imagery replicates itself both within and outwith art, and considers whether this replication is ever ethical.
But the erasure of women’s experience is likewise all too commonplace. Speaking on Red Like Fruit, Moscovitch says, “I wrote the play [to] speak about what it feels like to be a woman now, in the 2020s, and to un-redact the redacted pieces of my own life.” Spotlighting Lauren’s story, Moscovitch refuses to participate in women and men’s enforced legacy of silence.
Our own participation in misogyny is rightfully questioned in The City for Incurable Women. “The audience is watching. They are looking at a body, witnessing abuse,” says fish in a dress, noting how the play demands our voyeurism while simultaneously critiquing it. “The City for Incurable Women once again puts the ‘Hysterical Woman’ in the spotlight, to challenge: why do we keep looking at her?” We’re left to question the very concept of consent – and who controls it.
There is, however, hope to be had. In its portrayal of women’s resilience, I See You Watching both affirms and inspires audiences. “It has become a reminder to myself and all the women around me of our undeniable power,” says Westerbeck. “This piece is to encourage us in the midst of our exhaustion to embark on the journey of rebellion.” For I See You Watching – as well as Red Like Fruit and The City for Incurable Women – watching is not simply a passive act; rather, it’s a call to action.
Red Like Fruit, Traverse Theatre, 31 Jul-24 Aug (not 4, 11, 18), various times
I See You Watching, Gilded Balloon Patter House, 30 Jul-24 Aug (not 11, 19), 8.30pm
The City for Incurable Women, Pleasance Courtyard, 30 Jul-25 Aug (not 12), 1.35pm