Reviewed by Rachel Doulton
FEMOID: a derogatory slang word for a woman, used by faceless incels online. This term titles this show at The Blue Room Theatre for Summer Nights Festival. FEMOID centres around three young girls on the precipice of adulthood; Piper, Rory, and Olive. All of them are trying their best to discover their identities as young women through girlhood and all that comes with it; joy, curiosity, awkwardness and shame.
The show opens up on a simple but effective set with hung bouquets of poppies as the backdrop, a remembrance of lost girlhood and deeper; the women we have lost from gendered violence. The ensemble did well manoeuvring three sets of small steps that acted as the school assembly chairs, desks covered with petrified gum to be scraped off as punishment or a playground bench to loll about on awaiting pick-up from mum. The lighting design was strong and tied in well with the simple costumes that evoked the innocent schoolgirl uniform.
The dialogue flowed well between the three performers and the support they had for each other as an ensemble translated exuberantly on stage into the friendship of the characters. They each captured the rambunctious naivety of what it was to be a teen; the surface presents new found bravado, but there is such depth to be uncovered that can be isolating. FEMOID shows that once the depths of insecurity and fear are shared, the burden of being a woman facing misogyny is easier to bear.
Throughout the piece, the scenes demonstrating the purity of girlhood emerging into adulthood were juxtaposed with soundbites from media and forums conveying the prevailing messaging of incel culture. An average teen party with dancing and underage drinking suddenly has a quote from an anonymous forum post as its backdrop and the audience is pulled from sharing in the girls' fun to worry as collective memory remembers the worst that happens at those parties. It illustrates how much this rhetoric has permeated culture: these girls are never seen talking to these kinds of faceless misogynists and yet it has permeated into their conversations to enforce the shame and learned constant vigilance so many young girls have to face.
The persistent misogyny that runs rampant is too often played off as too insignificant to be addressed but these young women show us that if we don’t address the seemingly insignificant as it happens, it can get passed the point of no return. Alea iacta est.
Reviewer Note: Tickets for this review were provided by the theatre company.
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