Writers and Directors: Reya Muller and Isabelle Tyner
Exploring different collaborative models to break down the strictly defined roles within the construction of a show, Reya Muller and Isabelle Tyner’s Semblance of a Woman is a multi-stranded piece exploring self-acceptance, social expectations and the boundaries of falling in love. Staged at The Water Rats as part of the Camden Fringe, the creators have clearly spent a great deal of time workshopping myths and philosophy, the pressures placed on women and the constructed fears that shape behaviour, but the fundamental story still requires some shaping.
Alone in her room an unnamed woman is unable to engage with the world, barely able to get out of bed other than to use her laptop. Soon another woman appears in this space, an unexplained being who decides to call herself Gaia and names the first woman Peggy. Meeting only at night, they slowly connect as Gaia learns more about the world and Peggy starts to unfold.
Semblance of a Woman is assembled from a mixture of longer discussion scenes and a collection of montages in which the two women get to know one another, read Peggy’s favourite books and watch a series of important films including Clash of the Titans and Before Sunrise to teach Gaia about the world. The creative team structure this around several milestone conversations, some more overtly exploring the role of women in contemporary society, including a discussion of make-up, and other more opaque debates about the meaning of colours.
And while this 60-minute play is focused on the growing intimacy between the two women and the barriers they create for themselves, Muller and Tyner actively turn away from the fundamental questions their scenario poses including just who Gaia is and how has she been formed from a jumble of laundry under Peggy’s bed. Without that identity driver, the play struggles to become more than a collection of ad hoc scenes and musings.
The synopsis implies much greater ambivalence about the reality of this scenario than the play itself eventually provides. Exploring whether Peggy and Gaia are versions of the same woman, Peggy’s projection of the different self she longs to be, representations of feminism, female desire or patriarchy or whatever the creators decide these characters should be would give Semblance of a Woman greater shape.
Helen Baird’s Gaia is an interesting concept, an innocent learning the world through Peggy’s eyes in which Baird displays a childlike wonder and appetite for the world. But is this a statement about the state women are born into before they become the anxiety-ridden and jaded Peggy (played by Emma Chatel) whose experience of the gendered rules constructed by society has driven her to her bed and a persistent agoraphobia?
The approach taken by this new collaborative of majority queer female creators is to be much admired, and leaving space for interpretation and ambiguity is hugely valuable for pushing audiences to engage with theatre in new ways, but Semblance of a Woman needs to decide what questions it is really asking.
Runs until 8 August 2023
Camden Fringe runs until 27 August 2023
