WE ARE THE TIGERS AT NYU

DIRECTORS NOTE:

Recently I have become deeply interested in the exploration of female rage and pain through theatre. For much of the late 1800's and early to mid 1900's, women’s role in theatre was reserved to that of the submissive, often desired ingenue. In many cases, her role in the play served only to provide objective or meaning to the larger, more important plot of the leading man. Furthermore, she was oftentimes subjected to violence or death, serving as a sort of sacrificial lamb for the good of the story, the community of the play, or to further cement her role as an angel or martyr.

 

It is only in our modern theatre canon, in plays and musicals such as The Wolves, Usual Girls, Carrie the Musical, John Deserves to Die, and of course, We Are the Tigers, that I have been able to see not only female characters at the center of the story, but these women freely and unabashedly expressing their pain, rage, and even violence, fighting back against a world that has for so long, enacted violence against women. Since almost the day we are born, women are taught, in both subtle and overt ways, to make themselves small, to be agreeable and kind at all costs, even if it means silently enduring abuse and violence. Thus, there is something deeply cathartic about the image of a woman onstage screaming and howling in pain, or covered in the blood of those who have wronged her. By playing out their pain onstage, women are able to exist in a fantasy world where the patriarchal structures momentarily fade away, and what is theatre if not a place that exists simultaneously as an escape and a mirror?