DEVILS (Diably)

Abstract

"Women are a mistake of nature... with their excess of moisture and bodily heat that indicates physical and mental deficiency... they are a kind of invalid, misbegotten and failed man... The full realisation of human kind is man”. These words by St Thomas Acquinas could be used as a motto of crusade launched over two millennia by the Catholic Church against women. Agnieszka Błońska and Joanna Wichowska seek out the sources, symptoms and consequences of this continuing offensive, particularly intensified in rent years in Poland. The story of possessed and exorcised nuns serves as a pretext for research into the long history of colonization of female body, sexual repression, stigmatization of difference and imposition of rigid gender roles. In this investigation a woman becomes a representative of all those, who are left behind a superior norm of human kind, which is man – a heterosexual father, thinker, warrior, priest, god; she is an agent of all “misfits” – those expelled from the privileged majority. In this performance the Church Fathers, Mothers Joans and devils living in their bodies and minds will speak. But most importantly, contemporary women and men who willingly or not take part in a supposedly defensive cultural war fought all over Europe and Poland; a war declared by the Church and politicians. The alleged aggressor in here is “gender ideology”, also called “genedrism”. The alleged victim – religious people, defended by far-sighted “shepherds”. The battleground – a family, femininity and masculinity, treated by bishops as given by God and similarly as body (is that so?) non discussable and unchangeable. Which role in this battle is assigned to each and all of us? Which role are we accept, consciously or not? To what extend are we upholding patriarchy ourselves? And finally, does particular female perspective have to indicate exclusion from common “human” experience? The performance is inspired by motifs from Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s story „Mother Joan of the Angels”. It was made for the 4th Art and Community Festival Happy City and premiered on the 7th of December in Teatr Powszechny in Warsaw, Poland. The research involved Dr. Anna Szwed from Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Dr. Agnieszka Koscianska from Warsaw University and Marta Abramowicz, writer