Virginia Frankovich’s directorial debut for Silo Theatre explodes across the Basement Theatre stage with an astute understanding of the complexity of Alice Birch’s text. Last year Silo proved that they are not a company to pander to the mainstream sensibilities and once again they present us with a piece of self-dubbed feminist theatre that attempts to unpack, navigate and challenge the language and behaviour that the patriarchy has weaved into our daily lives.

Entering the space, you are presented with a messy stage that looks more like a poorly organised backstage than a performance space, but soon enough, the actors begin clearing it away leaving a blank white canvas. [More] 

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With women at the forefront of resistance in the era of alternative facts, it is heartening to see Silo launching its 2017 season with a raucous celebration of the feminist avant-garde.

Even more prescient is British playwright Alice Birch’s intense focus on the way everyday language distorts reality and undermines our ability to communicate with each other.

The play opens with a brilliantly funny series of sketches that shine a glaring spotlight on the assumptions and attitudes encoded within our linguistic habits. [More] 

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British playwright Alice Birch’s absurdist deconstructed anthology Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. is simultaneously inquisitive, antagonistic, eloquent, obtuse, frank and recondite.  The series of disparate scenes addresses a range of feminist subjects, which of course is not to say subjects caused by feminism; rather the archetypal topics which the ongoing organic social movement known as feminism necessarily came into being to directly challenge and transform. 

At first the stage is cluttered with miscellaneous props: clothes, furniture, exercise equipment, fruit and veg, wigs, water cooler and a shopping trolley et al; an ostensible junk pile from which every item will serve a narrative function in due course.  This could feasibly be read as an analogy for how our preconceptions of any given opinions or ideas may prove inaccurate as their true value is demonstrated. 

At the far end, stage manager Eliza Josephson-Rutter slouches at her desk, nonchalantly checking her smartphone as the performers busy themselves clearing the stage, drawing a panoramic screen across the back wall, consulting their notes and helping with each other’s makeup.

Steeped in humour and attitude, the ensuing action is driven and intense, aptly marking the directorial debut of physical theatre veteran Virginia Frankovich.  Comprising three women – Sophie Henderson, Michelle Ny and Amanda Tito – and a bloke, Fasitua Amosa, the cast fairly crackles with sassy, mischievous energy as they launch into their complex mission, to exemplify the present status of the continuing global gender debate.

In the first scene two lovers verbally spar over the terminology of the sex act, highlighting the prevalent tendency for it to be described from the male perspective, e.g. ‘penetration’ versus ‘envelopment’.  In the next, coming in immediately post-marriage proposal, a young woman is at first lost for words before finding a whole lot to earnestly explain her quandary surrounding the implications of such a request to her bemused partner.

Each vignette broadens the discourse to include sexual politics, language, social and familial expectations, the beauty myth and rape culture, and so on.  There are half a dozen scenarios presented including the final chaotic frenzy wherein a handful of contentious events play out simultaneously.  A series of revolutionary calls-to-arms periodically appear on the screen to punctuate the onstage action, such as ‘Revolutionise the work – engage with it’ or ‘Revolutionise the world – don’t reproduce’. 

Within the exploration of what defines and divides the sexes, there’s a palpable sense of inclusive collaboration within the company, including the commendable efforts of the design team of Kate Burton (lights), Daniel Williams (set and costumes) and Claire Duncan (sound).

So much information is compressed into six scenes inside an hour, it could feasibly take days to unpack and consider the significance and ramifications of every question, suggestion and concept broached therein.  The programme’s centre page essays on the principles of feminist satire, the playwright’s inspiration and intent, and the relevance of these ideas within the ‘revolting’ global politics of right now, are an indispensable tool to this end. 

One or two moments where characters appear to briefly concur are welcome respite in the surrounding confusion, being mostly at cross-purposes in their laughably human attempts to communicate.  The most apparent upshot of this entertainingly unsettling theatrical document is what a socio-political minefield it is just trying to establish a mutually respectful linguistic base on which to move forward constructively (hence the possibly excessive verbosity of this very analysis). 

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