Murdoch Performing Group have announced their new show Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again., a postdramatic, feminist play written by British playwright Alice Birch. Variously referred to as “angry and frantic” and “an hour-long scream of rage from modern feminism,” this production of Revolt will show at the Nexus Theatre with limited capacity from Wednesday, October 28 to Saturday, October 31.
Far from tame, this is “in-yer-face theatre”: a feminist production that interrogates the structures and societal norms present in modern society that stands in the way of true equality. Revolt exposes the power of language by subverting and playing with it, telling the story of the contemporary female struggle in a patriarchal universe.
Birch wrote the play in 2016 in just three days as an angry response to the famous proclamation from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” The opening of this piece is said to promise that Revolt is not a well-behaved play, written in the style of a manifesto that hits hard through horrific humour and jumps from topic to confronting topic.
In true postdramatic style, Revolt is made up of four different acts, each in a vastly different style, in which topics such as rape, domestic abuse, marriage, and other violent themes are explored with minimal use of symbolism peppered throughout to create a throughline in place of a traditional narrative. The show offers everything from watermelons and bluebells to paradoxical prophecies of dystopia and utopia, where the line between the performer and character continuously blurs and the fourth wall is completely torn down.
According to director Dr David Moody, “This play is a funny, confronting and challenging work highly relevant to contemporary debates about gender and sexual politics. One thing I can promise: it won’t be boring. Short, punchy and fun.”
Murdoch Performing Group presents Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. at Nexus Theatre from Wednesday, October 28 to Saturday, October 31. Click here for tickets.
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