THE MAIDS by Jean Genet, translated by Martin Crimp, directed by Brendan Healy (Buddies in Bad Times, 12 Alexander). Opens tonight (Thursday, September 22) and runs to October 9, Tuesday-?Saturday 8 pm, matinee Sunday 2:30 pm. Pwyc-?$33. 416-?975-?8555. See listings.
Buddies artistic director Brendan Healy is worried about our future. That’s why he’s dusting off Jean Genet’s subversive, absurdist classic The Maids to open the new season.
“I wanted to put together a season that reflected on queer history and offered a reconsideration of how we got to this moment – with the election of our mayor and this large shift to the right,” says Healy. “Genet seemed like the right place to start.”
Genet gained notoriety in postwar European literary circles for his dark, symbolic critiques of authority and his outsider status as an incarcerated thief, sexual “deviant” and subversive radical.
“I think Genet can offer a powerful perspective on what it is to really rebel and rise from an oppressed position.”
While The Maids is notoriously complex, the set-up is simple: two maids living in a sort of folie à deux plot to kill their employer, Madame. The complexity lies in the symbolic meaning of the constant play-acting two title characters engage in while their boss is away.
“What’s great about The Maids is that it operates within a structure that we see as legit: the classic upstairs/downstairs play. But the political ideas behind it call for the eradication of society [as we know it] and our concept of identity.”
So what’s it like being an authority figure in a production hostile to the very idea of authority?
“It’s funny – we speak about this a lot in rehearsals, about how I’m performing the role of ‘director’ and [the cast members] are performing the role of ‘actors’ and how this can be problematic and frustrating. Sometimes the discourses that our roles get us into can really limit the conversation.
“However, I never think of myself as a figure of authority. I see myself as someone who has the power of witnessing and communicating back.”
Originally, Genet stipulated that the play’s three female characters should be performed by adolescent boys. Healy’s choice of Stratford vets Ron Kennell and Diane D’Aquila as the maids doesn’t go quite that far but still achieves Genet’s goal of blurring identities.
“I was interested in the tension between a biological female and [a character] who isn’t biologically female but identifies as female, and I just fell in love with their dynamic.”
For set, lighting and sound design, Healy uses the Dora Award-winning team from last season’s production of Blasted (Julie Fox, Kimberly Purtell and Richard Feren). He promises the result will be “David Lynch meets Walt Disney.”
As for the Dora he received for directing that play, it hasn’t fazed him.
“There’s a great sense of accomplishment, but I’m trying not to get wrapped up in that. I’m focused on continuing my artistic exploration of my lifelong obsessions with questions about power and making our existence more tolerable.”
Interview Clips
How the play speaks to the constructedness of identities:
Healy on the threats to arts funding:
