Vitus Theater: "Die Zofen"

The Maids / Glenda Jackson and Susanna York

Les Bonnes / SOLANGE, doucement d'abord

WOMEN MURDER WOMEN: CASE STUDIES IN THEATRE AND FILM

by MARIAN LEA MCCURDY

ABSTRACT

This thesis looks at two cases of women who murdered women – the Papin sisters (Le Mans, 1933) and Parker-Hulme (Christchurch, 1954) – and considers their diverse representations in theatre and film, paying particular attention to Jean Genet’s play The Maid (1947), Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Peter Falkenberg’s film Remake (2007), in which I played a part. What happens when two women (sisters, girl friends) commit violent acts together – not against a man, or a child, but against another woman, a mother or (as in the case of the Papin sisters) against women symbolically standing in place of the mother? How are these two cases – the Papin sisters and Parker-Hulme – presented in historical documents, reinterpreted in political, psychoanalytic and feminist theories, and represented in theatre and film? How might these works of theatre and film, in particular, be seen to explain – or exploit – these cases for an audience? How is the relationship between prurience – the peeping at women doing something bad – and the use of these cases to produce social commentary and/or art, better understood by looking at these objects of fascination ourselves? My thesis explores how these cases continue to interest and inspire artists and intellectuals, as well as the general public – both because they can be seen to violate fundamental social taboos against mother-murder and incest, and because of the challenge they pose for representation in theatre or film.

view full thesis at: [http://ir.canterbury.ac.nz/bitstream/10092/1938/1/thesis_fulltext.pdf]

THE CRIME OF THE PAPIN SISTERS

In February, 1933, the whole of France was horrified to learn of an unspeakably savage double murder that had taken place in the town of Le Mans. Two respectable, middle-class women, mother and daughter, had been murdered by their maids, two sisters who lived in the house. The maids had not simply killed the women, but had gouged their eyes out with their fingers while they were alive and had then used a hammer and knife to reduce both women to a bloody pulp. In both cases, there were no wounds to the body. Apart from some gashes to the daughter's legs, the full force of the attack was directed at the heads and the victims were left literally unrecognisable...(click to read full article)

from: [http://papinsisters.tripod.com/crime.htm]

Papin sisters

Christine and Lea Papin were two French maids who murdered their employer's wife and daughter in Le Mans,France, on 2nd February, 1933. This incident had a significant influence on French intellectuals Genet, Sartre andLacan, who sought to analyse it, and it was thought of by some as symbolic of class struggle. The case has formed the basis of a number of films and plays.

Life and Crime

Christine (born 8th March, 1905) and Lea (born 15th September, 1911) had grown up in villages south of Le Mans. They had another sister, Emilia, who became a nun. Both of them spent time in institutions as a result of the breakdown of their parents' marriage. As they grew older, they worked as maids in various Le Mans homes, preferring, whenever possible, to work together.

From about 1926, they worked as live-in maids in the home of Monsieur Rene Lancelin, a retired solicitor, in Rue Bruyere, Le Mans. The family was also made up of his wife and adult daughter, who was still living with her parents (another daughter was married). The two maids were extremely quiet and retiring young women, who kept to themselves and appeared to have no interest but each other...

click to view full article: [http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/1484644]

The Maids / Alison Croggon

I vividly remember my first encounter with the writing of Jean Genet. I was around nineteen and for reasons I forget - perhaps no reason - I picked up his first novel, Our Lady of the Flowers. I read it in a kind of daze: I found myself hypnotised by the sheer decadent sensuality of the prose, and at the same time completely confused. I did not understand this moral universe at all.

Yet, when I reached its final pages, there occurred one of those perceptual shifts that art can occasionally produce, a kind of click; the mental equivalent, I suppose, of those Victorian optical puzzles where you suddenly realise that what appears at first to be a white vase is also two faces in profile. It was as if, through the experience of reading it... (click to read full article)

from: [http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2005/05/maids.html]

Introduction by Jean-Paul Sartre

INTRODUCTION

by JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

"Epimenides says that Cretans are liars. But he is a Cretan. Therefore he lies. Therefore Cretans are not liars. Therefore, he speaks the truth. Therefore, Cretans are liars. Therefore, he lies, etc." This is the argument of Epimenides. It is the model of circular sophistry as bequeathed by ancient scepticism. Truth leads to the lie and vice-versa.

The mind that enters one of these vicious circles goes round and round, unable to stop. With practice, Jean Genet has managed to transmit to his thought an increasingly rapid circular movement. He has a vision of an infinitely rapid rotation which merges the poles of appearance and reality, just as, when a multi-colored disk is spun quickly enough, the colors of the rainbow interpenetrate and produce white. Genet constructs such whirligigs by the hundred. They be. come his favorite mode of thinking. He indulges knowingly in false reasoning.

The most extraordinary example of the whirligigs of being and appearance, of the imaginary and the real, is to be found..........

(Genet, J. & Fretchman, B. 1962. The Maids and Deathwatch: Two Plays. P.7-18. Grove Press)


http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=4130697

Something about Jean Genet

This French writer, a dramatist and convicted felon, became one of the leading figures in the avant-garde theater. Genet' depicted the world of male prostitutes, convicts, pimps and social outcasts, the dark side of society which knew by his own experience. For a long time he was so addicted to theft that he stole diamonds from his hostesses at a literary reception. However, Genet's life changed radically when such prominent figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau clamored successfully for his parole. He subsequently escaped his criminal past and embarked on a new career as a writer, who glorified homosexual love and lawbreaking. "O let me be nothing but beauty alone! Quickly or slowly I will go, but I will dare what must be dared. I will destroy appearances, the casings will be burnt off and will fall from me, and I will appear there, some evening, on the palm of your hand, calm and pure like a statuette of glass." (from The Thief's Journal, 1954)

"In writing out for his pleasure the incommunicable dreams of his particularity, Genet has transformed them into exigencies of communication... Genet began to write in order to affirm his solitude, to be self-sufficient, and it was the writing itself that, by its problems, gradually led him to seek readers." (Jean-Paul Sartre in Saint Genet, 1963)

Jean Genet was born in Paris, the illegitimate..........(read more)


http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/jgenet.htm

Video on Vimeo

The Maids from Theater Studies on Vimeo.

女侍／侍女

康樂及文化事務署主辦

伙伴經典創作系列二
瘋祭舞台／愛麗絲劇場實驗室聯合創作

《女侍／侍女》

一個不尋常作品的不尋常二重奏

瘋祭舞台的何應豐和愛麗絲劇場實驗室的陳恆輝為法國作家尚‧惹內一九四七年創作的《女侍》The Maids! 分別作出其「自在」的閱讀，為作品重新創作兩個不同的版本。何應豐以一個設計的「二重變奏」拉開尚‧惹內曾置身及目睹的「現代監牢」。陳恆輝的創作著眼於尚‧惹內原劇戲劇面貌的探究，何應豐從作品再延伸思考今日後現代資本主義獨裁世界下的「奴性」。荒誕，或許是戲劇工作者面向如此世代餘下的最後攻略……

原著：尚‧惹內 Jean Genet

監製：何應豐 、陳瑞如


翻譯：何應豐 （ 女侍 ）

改編：何應豐
（ 侍女 ）

導演：陳恆輝（ 女侍 ）、何應豐（ 侍女 ）

設計：邵偉敏

主要演員：

胡美寶、 莫穎詩及林燕 (侍女) 


陳瑞如、黃懿雯及李潔芝 (女侍)

演出場地：葵青黑盒劇場 


日期: ２０１０年２月２５−２８日