SLUT
by Patricia Cornelus
Lolita is a slut. So named, so celebrated, until one day she isn’t. The voice of the patriarchy seeps in, it bubbles up, ingested, internalised. SLUT plays in the grey area of sexual empowerment and dangerous sexualisation. This is a space peopled entirely by young women; Lolita and her girl gang. In SLUT girls evolve before our eyes; their personalities are in the crucible of adolescence, their potential is unlimited. This is the story of women growing into their bodies, owning their bodies and their bodies being owned by others.
Directors Statement by Erin Taylor
We are having a big national conversation about the treatment of women in Australian society, as we should and need to. And as this conversation progresses we begin to interrogate the nitty-gritty: the insidious misogyny in our language, the casual objectification, the creeping control of women and their bodies. This is a hard thing to confront. Most of us can truthfully claim we have never committed an act of violence, but very few of us can freely claim to have never glanced at a young woman and judged her short skirt, to have silently questioned why she was in that place at that time. This pattern of thought permeates our culture, we have been throughly trained. This conversation is about interrogating these patterns, holding up the everyday way we speak and act under the theatrical light.
This is one of the hard conversations that we must have. When we have these conversations in the theatre it is a space in which we can sit in the dark and wrestle with that uncomfortable feeling of knowing, recognition, even complicity. It is confronting. It is necessary.
This play was first produced as part of the WITS Festival Fatale in 2016. It then had a run in 2017 at the Old Fitz Theatre in Wooloomooloo, supported by Red Line Productions.
Written by Patricia Cornelius
Director: Erin Taylor
Producer: The Edgeware Collective
Assistant Direction: Laura Johnston
Design: Isabel Hudson
Sound Design: Nate Edmonson
Stage Management: Lucia May
Publicity: Maryann Wright (The Wright Publicity)
Production Photography: Clare Hawley
With additional support from the Edgeware Forum team.
With:
Julia Dray
Bobbie-Jean Henning
Jessica-Belle Keogh
Danielle Stamoulos
Maryanne Wright
DARLINGHURST THEATRE & THE OLD FITZ
Cast & Creatives
Particia Cornelius
Patricia Cornelius is a playwright, screenwriter and novelist.
Patricia’s most recent play, Shit, was presented at the 2017 Sydney Festival, following its 2015 Melbourne premiere as part of MTC’s Neon Season and its 2016 remount at 45Downstairs. Her play Savages (45Downstairs) won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Drama in 2014 and the Green Room Award for Writing and was nominated for an AWGIE and the Griffin Prize. It has since been produced at Darlinghurst Theatre in Sydney. Over her career Patricia has written over twenty five plays and they include: Big Heart, Do Not Go Gentle, The Call, Love, Fever, Boy Overboard, Slut and Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? (co-written with Andrew Bovell, Christos Tsiolkas, Melissa Reeves and Irine Vela).
Her prizes for stage work include the 2011 Victorian and NSW Premiers’ Literary Awards, the Patrick White Playwright’s Award, the Richard Wherrett Prize, the Wal Cherry Award and nine AWGIES for stage, community theatre, theatre for young people. She won the prestigious Australian Writers Foundation Playwriting Award in 2015 as well as the Patrick White Fellowship (2012), and a Fellowship from the Australia Council’s Theatre Board. Patricia has won the AWGIE Major Award three times. Patricia is a founding member of Melbourne Workers’ Theatre.
Patricia co-wrote the feature film adaptation Blessed, based on the play Who’s Afraid of the Working Class? (for which she won an AWGIE) and she is currently developing a feature film with director Catriona McKenzie with Screen Australia funding. Patricia wrote the novel My Sister Jill (Random House) and many of her plays are published by Currency Press. Patricia is currently working on two major stage commissions; one for the State Theatre Company of South Australia, and the other for the Melbourne Theatre Company.
ERIN TAYLOR
JULIA DRAY
BOBBIE-JEAN HENNING
JESS-BELLE KEOGH
DANIELLE STAMOULOS
MARYANNE WRIGHT