That Woman: Collection Amerique Francaise; 5

The story of a woman (her name is never given), sent away from her family by her brother, the Bishop, after she is found exploring her sexuality at age seventeen. In a series of twenty-four “snapshots,” That Woman is a devastating Judeo-Christian allegory where voyeurism, fantasy, masturbation, seduction, violence and loss are revealed in fugue-like monologues by the three characters present on stage: a woman who was thirsty, her son who liked to laugh, and an old man who watched them. It is a play which makes the literal “patriarchal gaze” emanating from three fisheye holes into the most private rooms of the woman’s apartment the searing light which withers every impulse to joy and creation, and in which the Mary-Eve schizophrenia of the feminine archetype “wastes” the seed of the equally schizophrenic, celibate/dreamer-rapist/destroyer, male archetype of the patriarchal Catholic tradition.