Venue: Yellow Umbrella (Potts Point NSW), Sep 13 – 22, 2018
Creator: Joanna Joy
Cast: Anca Frankenhaeuser, Emalyn Knight, Keila Terencio
Images by Emily Contador-Kelsall
Theatre review
Three women in the basement of a house are obsessing over their bodies. They try to resist centuries of objectification, humiliation and commodification, thinking up ways to overcome that sense of inadequacy so fundamentally conditioned into the way we conceive of ourselves. The White Spirit Cult emerges from ideas around shame and purity, an artistic endeavour that frames the feminine experience of virtue, in its many physicalised forms, as being inherently illusory and absurd. Like many modern women who have wised up to forces of oppression, the work attempts to deconstruct those myths that have always tainted our self worth.
The women want to be able to see the cult for what it is, but change is hard, and we witness them resisting their own emancipation, often luxuriating within their own masochistic worship of the false god. It is an ethereal and surreal presentation of ideas, but inexorably realistic. We relate to every word that is being said, regardless of the subject’s age or cultural background. Our adversity unites us, but the suffering sisterhood must be careful not to serve the elevation and advancement of the cult’s objectives. It may ultimately be about rebellion and self-determination, but the show is only able to offer inspiration, as we come to the realisation of our evident incapacity to establish something new.
We may be able to talk about a place outside of the cult, but it is clear that many of us are still on the inside of it. Performers Anca Frankenhaeuser, Emalyn Knight and Keila Terencio are a beautiful embodiment of our dissatisfaction. They are spirited and determined, but also lost in their angst. What they represent is true; we can be joyful, or proud , or indeed, wise, but that disquiet is a sensation hard to abandon.
www.facebook.com/WHITESPIRITCULT
Suzy Goes See 