The realities of family violence are incredibly, painfully confusing. After all, why have families in the first place if not to love and care for one another? Why do we love and care for people who hurt us? Why do we hurt people who love and care for us? Deciding that you find someone so wonderful you want to structure your life in a way that incorporates them only to realise years later that you don’t like them or they hate your guts or the two of you are simply unable to functionally live together without making each other worse off in some deeply important and irreconcilable ways is one of the most disorienting things that can and does happen to so many people. 

Per my title – ‘Repeatedly mashed against the walls of the spinning dryer’ – Girls & Boys is a kind of meditation on differential treatment of girls and boys and how that produces different kinds of adults. It doesn’t tell us what to think, far from being a feminist ‘tendensroman’, Girls & Boys depicts a complicated reality and invites us to attempt to make sense of it on our own terms, while still offering a strong argument for how and why we might look at family violence through a feminist lens.

When I think of solo theatre I think of I Love You Bro (Silo, 2011). Ascetic designs allow a solo performer to imbue negative space with so much theatrical power. In I Love You Bro the negative space was transparently the experience of lack which gave way to obsession. Girls & Boys presents the inverse, in which the observable elements draw our attention to a complete picture that is always out of frame. The unfailing (but not unflinching) transparency of the unnamed woman, our protagonist, allows us to see the world as opaque as she encounters it.

Love stories structurally tend towards epistemic uncertainties as a cause of dramatic conflict. How do we resolve uncertainty, what actions do we take when faced with hidden information? Our unnamed woman, played by Beatriz Romily, hardly has time to ponder. Life just keeps moving, represented kinetically by the spinning stage, and she needs to stay active to avoid getting lost in the churn. Outside of key points of drama there is a story told about the many small mistakes we make in the face of the onslaught of existence–as we are forced to make time-sensitive practical decisions and in doing so draw from ideologies produced and imbued in us, often without our ability to critically assess and accept, reject, or alter them. Unnamed working-class woman presents her career path doing executive work to support the creation of documentaries as inexplicable, but as I see it she’s clearly doing what she can to support people doing the work of reflecting on social existence in a way she herself has not had, and does not imagine she will have, the opportunity to do. 

I’ve seen significantly larger productions feel emptier on the ASB Waterfront stage. There isn’t a wasted moment. The space is used to its fullest potential, which is a fantastic achievement with a solo performance on one of Aotearoa’s largest stages. Romily, directed by Eleanor Bishop & mime-coached by Barnie Duncan, has absolute command of the space. As the unnamed woman, she is brash, harried, distracted, and most importantly unafraid to live her life as she chooses, and her few moments of quiet defeat feel massive, especially in combination with the audio and lighting design. The casting of Beatriz Romily is a superb decision, and I’m sure she’s well on her way to earning a reputation as one of the best working actors in Aotearoa. Eleanor Bishop’s career focus on creating compelling, truthful and educational theatre focused on sexism undoubtedly served the crafting of a performance that deals with some of the hardest topics imaginable with both care and finesse. 

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