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A Perfect Life
A Perfect Life
by
Alistair Maxwell
This year, students of Osijek’s Academy of Arts and Culture were invited to participate in this year’s International Puppetry Festival Lutkokaz - a festival that annually showcases experimental theatre, performance art, visual arts and of course puppetry. But one group chose to share a highly stylised, intensely choreographed and dark play that explores abuse and power in a world where gender roles are strictly enforced. In A Perfect Life, women have no power except for what a man chooses to give her. Not only are the women second class citizens, but they are also bitter rivals, willing to be vicious if it means holding onto what little power they have, or elevating themselves to the prized position of a trophy wife.
In one of the Academy of Arts and Culture’s many black box studio spaces, the cast have created a shiny, 1950s Americana style world bursting at the seams with A Handmaid’s Tale horror. The play opens with three women washing mugs – huge fake smiles and shrill, synchronised laughs in tow. They perform an elaborate, scrubbing routine, not quite in unison but all very clearly trying to meet some pre-ordained mark. They scrub and laugh and wash and grimace. What is especially chilling is the fact that they aren’t being watched; - they may be practising hawking their wares, but with no buyers currently around, it is clear that they are only in competition with each other.
After a desperate frenzy of trying to outperform each other, one nameless woman is selected to perform these mundane tasks for a man. Given the bitter looks the also-rans throw, it’s clearly quite the privilege. Of course, as the play continues The Protagonist finds out that her new rank is just as awful as her previous one and she’s subject to severe mistreatment at the hands of the patriarchs enforcing this system.
One of the most impressive moments is when The Protagonist hears a noise from the window. Not an on-stage window or bit of set, but from the window of the black box theatre. Suddenly, another woman bursts in and with her, so too does all of the light and sound of the real world. By utilising the space, the play is able to fracture the reality of the world of these characters. Little could be as effective at conveying the bleak enforcement of this dystopia than by contrasting it with genuine rays of sunlight or snippets of birdsong. Even the sudden burst of oxygen had the audience rising up like flowers. Once it is clarified that there is a real, hopeful world outside, the show is able to shift the audience from feelings of sympathy to empathy. The Protagonist’s captor not only forces this newcomer into the ritual servitude, but he also locks and bars the windows, denying each and every one of us the warmth and light of the sun.
A Perfect Life pushes the envelope even further in a last-minute plot twist. The Newcomer takes The Protagonist aside to show her something, suddenly the curtains part and we see the 50’s mug-washing set again at the back of the stage but instead of washing mugs, three people are cutting lemons. They have the same huge fake smiles, the same shrill synchronised laughs but they are all performing under the banner for the International Puppetry Festival Lutkokaz. This could either be interpreted as a mere signpost that we are now watching a play within a play, or as Brechtian clarification that these concerns are very much real and that the themes are based on some harrowing real experiences.
Either way, it is watching this play – this echo of the one we are currently watching – that finally encourages The Protagonist to act. Until now she has believed that the best a woman can do is to keep her head down, maybe work her way to the top but it’s not the abuse that she has endured that breaks her, but watching this abuse happen to the characters within the play. She storms out of the theatre despite the rages and wails of her captor, and as she flies right out of the black box door, for just a moment the audience and captives on stage are treated to the sunlight of the real world and the fresh air of a different future.
This could be seen as an optimistic end, the abused woman escaping her captor and embarking on a fresh start. However, the company is able to imbue the ending with more nuance. Although The Protagonist may be free, no one else is. The set remains the same and the women remain in their place. The argument is that freeing one person is not enough, the whole system needs to be broken down, just like the window. This kind of nuance elevates the peace from a “feel-good redemption” story to an altogether more effective look at systems of abuse and power.
