LULU v.7 // creators' notes
(co-written with susanna fournier and helen yung).
about frank wedekind & the victorians
the LULU plays are massive, dense, and strange, expressionistic nightmare-orgies spawned in freud’s hysterical womb. the plays have it all: prostitution, homosexuality, violent sex crime, paedophilia, a circus, and a hell of a body count by the end. writing through the birth of psychoanalysis, a period in which western culture began a deep investigation of alternative sexuality, and the ‘monstrous’ depths of the individual and collective unconscious—wedekind’s work is fascinated with all manner of sexual perversion, impulse, and archetype.
unsurprisingly, his life was marked by perpetual battles with the german censors. (the censorship laws were lifted a few months after he died of a heart attack)
he finished “pandora’s box: a monster-tragedy” (aka LULU) in 1894. the play was later split into two parts. the first part was permitted for production, but the second, containing lulu’s encounter with jack the ripper, could only be privately performed.
about us & this evening
over the last 4 years we’ve deconstructed wedekind’s “pandora’s box” 6 times. what began as investigation of the original text became a prismatic exploration of sex & death, love & grief, the politics of authorship, and how these intersect with theatrical form and the histories of gendered power that have shaped, and continue to shape, the narratives we consume and create.
we are in conversation with frank wedekind—and the victorian worldview that still dominates much of our culture. tonight’s work is divided into 2 parts, in conversation with each other.
the first part happens between sex and death. this is a glimpse into wedekind’s circus of appetite. we’ve dialled up his carnal vision of the victorian underbelly to present his story of lulu and her lovers with all its humour, neuroticism, violence, and sexism intact. lulu is bizarre, a ‘difficult woman’ seemingly only interested in her own pleasure. her lovers are a motley crew—obsessed with their own desire to define and possess her. these people are weird. (they horrify and enrage us). their world is highly saturated, operatic in scale, governed by appetite and shame.
unlike the german censors, we aren’t making the gendered violence of the play invisible by relegating it to private spheres. we aren’t pretending this violence isn’t a part of public life, or that is doesn’t continue to thrive in our most intimate realms and most public social structures.
the second part happens between love and grief. if wedekind is offering aspects of the human animal at its most primal, we’re responding with it at its most tender. as he’s interrogating violence and sex, we’re longing for eros—attempting to untangle lulu, and ourselves, from the violent grip of history. our 6 previous versions have each revealed to us new ways to encounter and embody an emergent feminine. we’re searching for how the erotic lives within each of us, manifests between us, and can transform us. working outside of linear narrative structures, we’re crafting a theatrical experience of ‘lulu’ through colour, movement, resonance, and collectivity.
like all the versions that have come before, this is an experiment. instead of telling lulu what she is, we’re following her as she leads our hearts deeper into the unknown. we’re journeying into the dark centre of the world where the tree of desire grows. nothing about the unknown is comfortable, predictable, or easy. we’re confronting violent legacies, and how they continue to live, as we journey.
we invite you to journey with us and peel back the layers of legacy, so we can meet each other in the pulsing heart of longing. of being. and of being together.