"The maids" by Jean Genet

Revolution and abuse of power in the living room.: Claire and Solange are maids, sisters, employees of a despotic mistress. Day in, day out, they clean the luxurious apartment of the all too gracious woman. They scrub, wipe, polish and besmirch the furniture and the ego of their mistress in equal measure – until they decide to get rid of their mistress once and for all… Who is actually trapped in a seemingly hopeless situation of dependencies and mortifications? Does the gracious mistress exist without her servants? And who is her true right hand and what gets into her head?

A surreal (puppet) play within a play within a play begins and “just a wave of your hand would be enough and you would cease to exist.”

“The Maids” basically fulfill all the requirements for the success of a democracy.. There are three of them, a majority against the totalitarian system: the gracious woman – the doll. And yet here you can watch their glorious failure. Hopeless and human?

In collaboration with puppetry students and a student from the directing department, a wonderful, extremely virtuosic production about dependencies, majorities and the claim to leadership has been created. The maids, in Genet there are two, are three here. The Madame is a puppet. What is already inherent in the way the puppet plays, namely the question of who takes the lead, becomes here an intelligent question of power, of who excludes whom from the play (participation) by what means.

Participants

Director: Naemi Friedmann

dramaturgy: Lukas Nowak

Stage and costume: Sarah Wolters

Performing: Almut Schäfer-Kubelka, Maximilian Teschemacher and Sven Tillmann

The Maids (French: Les Bonnes) is a 1947 play in one act by Jean Genet, which premiered that year at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris amid strong protests. It was Genet’s first work performed on stage and is his most frequently performed play.

Performance rights: Verlag der Autoren, Frankfurt am Main.