Those reservoir thesps
Amanda "I'll-split-your-head-open" Walker loves Reservoir Dogs. As in, really loves it. So she wrote a play a bit like it. Only, being a DPhil student in English, she blended in a bit of feminist literary theory with the 'fucks' and the 'cunts' and the cock-size showdowns. The result, Splitting Anna, is a visceral bitch of a play (as the title suggests) produced as part of the New Writing Festival in 6th week. It's about three sad men at a book launch. They have all had a relationship with Anna, the author of the book entitled Splitting Adam: the second sex and the crisis of masculinity in the post-modern age.
The question we asked ourselves was: are these desperate, posturing fools supposed to represent all men? Is this play a simplistic feminist rant? Why is Anna absent? Actually, Anna does have a voice in the play - she is presented via extracts from her book and through the fantasies and warped memories that emerge as the three men try to impress their masculinity on each other. It becomes clear that Anna herself, through her emotional manipulation of the men and her crass feminist interpretation of her past relationships, is just as much the subject of criticism as the men are.
Rehearsals are replete with lewd hilarity. How else could we cope with Anna's earnest assertion that "by sexualising the speaker's words, the woman's mouth becomes nothing more than a gyrating vagina, an orifice incapable of communication". Yeah, we can do a pretty good impression now. And we can't help sensing that life is imitating art as the three of us gang up on our female director, threatening to make DIY orifices (for sex reasons). It's a process of self-discovery: prompted by the play we're discovering ever-deeper levels of sick humour. But then that's what the New Writing Festival is for, isn't it?
In the second act, Joe (my character) and Warren (a wannabe macho pipsqueak) are shocked into submission by Ray's stories of sexual violence. Warren is seduced by the power of Ray's lies. But, in our version, Joe finally rejects the violent fantasy world that the other two inhabit. So not all men are bad. Though we haven't cleared that interpretation with Amanda yet.
Ilan Goodman is Co-President of OUDS
13th Feb 2003