Perceiving The Maids - Katie Mitchell’s production of Jean Genet's De Meiden

Before seeing Katie Mitchell’s production of Jean Genet's De Meiden, I was indelibly excited. Not only did the storyline appeal, but I had studied Mitchell’s work previously, and the chance to be able to finally see one of her shows was extraordinary. This eagerness disintegrated, however, as I was met with a production that utterly disappointed. This is not to say that the show was entirely disastrous, in another light I might have even enjoyed many aspects, however the context in which I placed the show ensured its personal negative reception.

Rick Knowles created “a mode of performance analysis that takes into account the immediate conditions, both cultural and theatrical, in and through which theatrical performances are produced, on the one hand, and received, on the other” (Knowles, 3). This method examined the staged production itself (performance text), while also situating the performance within the framework of the conditions of production and reception. This final vertex of the triangular model Knowles created is the reason I could not love The Maids; I wanted to be blown away.

“Katie Mitchell has built a reputation for bold, often controversial stagings of both classic and contemporary text” (Blackadder, 139) and although her shows are occasionally hated by critics, they are still lauded for their attempt. Mitchell is known for trying to do something with her theatre; “It's not possible, overnight, to change the status quo, but everyone who's involved in the theatre has a responsibility to actually do what they really want to do to be true to what they feel is right. We've got to stop accepting compromises” (Mitchell). Such sentiments are frequently expressed, and yet Maids seemed to be a compromise of story and pretty stage dressings, lacking any clear motivation.

Mitchell is frequently attacked for her radical approach to base texts (Higgins), but Meiden seemed to be merely a well-executed, bland, production of an old script forced into the modern age with an updated setting and characters. It is possible that there was a radical idea that that was lost in “the potential gap between what is intended and what is likely to be received” (Turner, Behrndt, 156) — a gap that it is crucial to identify so that a work is relatable to performers and spectators. This alone does not account for the general malaise that seemed to suffuse the production, however. Perhaps my expectations were too high, too biased, but even had my conditions of reception been readjusted, this would not have been able to create a drive in a performance text that seemed utterly passionless.

Sources

Blackadder, Neil. “Review: Waves and Attempts on Her Life.” Theatre Journal, vol. 60, no. 1, 2008, pp. 139–141.

De Meiden. By Jean Genet. Dir. Katie Mitchell, Toneelgroep Amsterdam, 16 Jul. 2017, L'Autre Scène du Grand Avignon - Vedène, Avignon.

Mitchell, Katie. Interview with Charlotte Higgins. “Katie Mitchell, British Theatre’s Queen in Exile.” The Guardian, 14 January 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2016/jan/14/british-theatre-queen-exile-katie-mitchell.Accessed 17 July 2017.

Knowles, Richard. Reading the Material Theatre, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 1-23.

Turner, Cathy and Synne Behrndt. Dramaturgy and Performance, Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.

Woolgar, Claudia, and Katie Mitchell. “Braver Bolder Fearless.” Theatre Ireland, no. 30, 1993, pp. 12–15.