The Maids
The maids by Jean Genet is his well know play. Concepts like rituals, role-play and power are key for this story. Although it was written to be performed by men being the play an explicit and deliberately provocative portrayal of his homosexuality, there’s just a few male versions. Some productions had some of the more flamboyant moments of the original play and male characters left off stage.
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The main question I want to answer is ‘How far do we go?’ And I’m sure Genet would say. ‘All the way’.
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Using Physical theatre and movement as a key language I’d love to re-explore the idea of bringing The Maids back to a stage with male queer characters and work with concepts like dominant/submissive roles, love/hate, subject/object, reality/illusion and exploring deeper in the darker corners of human sexuality and sexual instinct as Genet was obsessed with.
This project wants to reflect the diversity and the queerness with a strong LGBTQ+ narrative on different cultures. That’s why I would love to work on the creation of this piece as a series of repetitions with the same concepts but with different dancers around the world. Their tradition, their culture, and their understanding of the concepts with their reality will make the piece unique from the others.
In 2014 I started to investigate about Jean Genet and The Maids, having a 15 minute piece as a result of this process. Currently and after ten years of exploring my queerness and sexuality, I have a closer approach about how to work on these themes thanks to my personal experience since then.
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This work is in R&D process and it's open for commissions or artistic residencies around the world to develop it further into a full performance of physical theatre and dance and filming to create the series of pieces to show it in an exhibitions LGBTQ+ orientated.
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Director/dramaturg: Vanesa Vergara
Performers in the video: Raffaele and Carlos Ara
Download our production dossier with more information, all the technical information, photos and cast biography.
CarlosAra&CO. is always open for new collaborations with communities and other companies for new projects. If you are interested bringing physical theatre and LGTBQ+ stories into theatre contact us for a brainstorming proposal.