Hey Girl! (review)

Following a performance of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio’s Hey Girl! a patron exiting the theatre volunteered out loud: “I liked what I saw. I’m just not sure what it is that I saw.” What is seen in Hey Girl!is visual rhetoric that suggests aspects of feminist ideology and gender oppression within the juxtaposition of spectacle with minimalism. Written and directed by Romeo Castellucci, Hey Girl!’s emotional core lies not in that to which its visual assemblage points, but rather the construction, artificiality, and theatricality of those assemblages as a thing or veracity itself. The theatrical dramaturgy of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio engages in nondiscursive images and aural communication, transcending logocentric dialogue and persuading the spectator to deconstruct the mise-en-scène using primarily visual associations. At times, Hey Girl! was overwhelming in its imagistic and aural opulence even for the contemporary spectator’s dexterity and ability to incorporate and process multiple images stacked vertically and horizontally. In light of this, it is not surprising that Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio often invites comparisons to other postmodern imagistic theatrical artists, in particular Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage.

Castellucci built a montage of often stunning tableaux accompanied by Artaudian vibrating, pulsating, and, at times, ear-splitting electronic sounds and music (designed by Scott Gibbons). On a sparse stage with minimal set ieces—a table, a short column, flown-in windows, screen projections (designed by Castellucci)—visual and aural scenes culminated as sensory evocations of a young woman’s conformity and nonconformity to cultural and societal norms, explorations of struggles between power and oppression, as well as the suppression of individuality. Hey Girl! focused predominantly on a young woman (Silvia Costa) who embodied an iconic persona for all women past and present. Her birth opened the performance with Costa’s gradual nude emergence from a wet, reddish plastic goo substance on top of a long rectangular table. Breathing in heavy rhythmic pants and bursts, Costastruggled to break free of the wet slime as she lifted herself off the table, laboring to maintain balance.What followed was a series of tableaux centered on the young woman as she examines her gender as asite of power and, by contrast, one of oppression. Once she clothed herself in a simple pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, Costa simply knelt before a broadsword and a bottle of Chanel No. 5 perfume and carefully applied lipstick to her mouth. On a white sheet, she burned an X and wore it as a cape while holding the sword and resting a foot on the perfume bottle, suggesting a Joan of Arc persona and, in turn, a juxtaposition of sexual innocence and resilient veneer. With a cautionary prediction of what happens when women garner any type of power or authority, Costa recited the names of historical women such as Marie Antoinette, Ann Boleyn, and Alexandra Feodorovna, who held positions of power only to meet violent ends in their respective patriarchal societies. Hey Girl! reinforcesthe adage that the personal is political.

Sonia Beltran Napoles in Hey Girl! Photo: Steirischerherbst/Manninger.

Subsequent imagistic and aural scenarios that reference gender oppression and the elimination of individuality included the sudden entrance by a group of men (local actors who answered a posted call to participate in the performance ) who wore hats and trenchcoats and simulated beating the young woman by slapping rubber truncheons against the floor. The blows were nowhere in danger of hitting Costa, yet it was the mechanics of the violent acts that transfixed the spectator, as opposed to the actual representation itself. The visual suppression ofindividuality that left only the shell of the young woman’s persona seemed to be indicated by Costawhen she emerged wearing an oversize three-dimensional rubber mask (designed and sculpted by Istvan Zimmerman) bearing a detailed likeness of herself. The mask could be read as an oversized and grotesque indicator of what others desired her to be. This reading was reinforced...