‘harlot/nun’ explores Madonna-Whore dichotomy

Think of a production that combines the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay '17­­­, passages from the Bible, excerpts from Shakespeare's plays, pieces from Kafka's The Metamorphosis, quotes from Gone With the Wind, and feminist punk songs and rap music from the '90s. While at it, combine these and many more sources with an examination of the archetypes of the goddesses, Artemis and Aphrodite. The result: "harlot/nun."

"harlot/nun," an Unbound production performed by the troupe Britomartis, will examine the specific roles and archetypes both Artemis and Aphrodite fill through analyzing history, literature and pop culture. The resulting commentary traces the reinterpretation of these archetypes. "harlot/nun" will take place in the Susan Stein Shiva Theater Feb. 24 at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. and Feb. 25 at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.

Formed last year after the production of "Letters in Pink and Grey," Britomartis is a devised theater—meaning, non-hierarchal and collaborative—troupe composed of nine students who all write and direct together for each performance, as is the case of "harlot/nun." "We all take equal parts and fill the roles on the production variously as is needed," wrote Britomartis member Violet Edelman '12 in an emailed statement. "We are extremely equitable and collaborative in terms of sharing responsibilities for the production."

A title taken loosely from an St. Vincent Millay poem, "harlot/nun" intends to investigate the Madonna-Whore complex, a Freudian concept that contends men tend to reduce women to one of two dichotomous roles—the saintly, virginal Madonna or the debased, immoral Whore—through developing reinterpretations of both Artemis and Aphrodite.

"harlot/nun" actor Molly Senack '14 said, "I thought the idea had always been to kind of trace not just the goddesses but the archetypes specifically, and the development and the distortion of the archetypes."

"harlot/nun" is no ordinary production—the performance's content is composed of over 50 different sources, including but not limited to the aforementioned Bible passages and poetry of St. Vincent Millay. The sources span a time period of 3000 years and make up almost all of the performance's script. Members promise "harlot/nun" has at least one text that everyone can recognize.

Written collaboratively by all nine members of the troupe, Britomartis members joked that they had only written about a total of 20 words in the entire play. "Our play is not original in that we didn't write it all ourselves," said Senack, "what we did was that we actually put everything together. We literally pulled texts word for word, and we combined it."

Sound Director of "harlot/nun" Kevin Ritter '15 put it somewhat differently. "Sometimes I like to think of it not so much as writing but more curating because we put one thing next to each other and they spoke to each other," Ritter said.

Stage Manager of "harlot/nun" Corinne Hastings '14 added to Ritter's statement. "You look at two pieces of text and intersperse them and you realize that they're in conversation with each other and nobody even realized that initially," she said. "It's definitely much more intimate, because at every single moment of this performance, I know that I had a thought about this and this is something I wanted to express and it's finally being put out there in a unique way."

Lyla Porter-Follows '14, who will play Artemis, noted that "harlot/nun" in turn doesn't have a clear narrative. "‘harlot/nun' doesn't really have a plot...but it has a progression, a thematic progression," she said. "We kind of wanted to show how it's sort of ridiculous that no real woman is going to fit neatly into either of those categories, but we wanted to explore the pressure to fit into those categories and we grew to develop more of a commentary than we had anticipated."

The performance was written in three movements but will be performed in one act. "We start by examining two archetypes in the most classical forms by looking at the stories that they're involved in and reinterpreting those stories," Porter-Follows said. "As we move forward, we focus on the character of the woman and how she's interpreting and internalizing those archetypes and how the line between them ceases to exist and where it does and where it doesn't." The performance will feature a mixture of dance, theater elements, narrative qualities and different modes of storytelling such as reading children's fairytales, playing with dolls and having conversations.

For the Britomartis troupe, having conversations and working collaboratively are huge parts of the troupe's mission. "The whole process is collaborative, so it was written collaboratively. We all did independent research, came together and shared the texts that we found," said Porter-Follows. "We had a lot of intellectual discussions about what we wanted to do and part of our troupe's mission is to incorporate a multidisciplinary approach to theatre that involves having discussions about what we're trying to create. Everyone was able to bring their particular field of study into the conversation in a really interesting way, and as actors and also designers, who are usually excluded from the process of writing and directing [is]. We really just enjoyed the opportunity as performers to have more of an input and more of a discussion about what we wanted to perform."

Actor Siobhan Reddy-Best '13 found it empowering to help shape not only the piece's staging but its creation and writing. "I just really hope it does make people think about the way that we tell stories," Reddy-Best said, "and the way that we work through things that we deal with on a daily basis."