Section:GDN 12 PaGe:10 Edition Date:190827 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 26/8/2019 12:24 cYanmaGentaYellowbl

• The Guardian
  10 Tuesday 27 August 2019
  Arts

Arnstein wrote her play, which

features shocking revelations about

auditions and casting call notices,

because she felt so galvanised by the

#MeToo movement that followed

the numerous allegations of rape

and sexual assault levelled at Harvey

Weinstein since 2017. (Allegations he

continues to deny in the run-up to his

trial in September.) “I was inspired

by the strength shown by people who

have called out abuse in the acting

industry,” Arnstein says. “This play

is my version of the #MeToo story,

my journey of being an actor and the

challenges I continue to face because

of my gender.”

She is not alone in putting abuse

on the stage. Several playwrights

have taken on the Weinstein story

directly , treating the allegations

in imaginative and sometimes

incendiary ways. Among the fi rst

was David Mamet, known for his

preoccupation with power and

its abuse, often refracted through

lethally predatory masculinity in

his plays. He announced in early

2019 that he was working on Bitter

Wheat, a “dark farce” starring John

Malkovich as a shamed movie mogul

called Barney Fein, who ha s uncanny

similarities to Weinstein.

Bitter Wheat landed with a thud

this summer in London. But Steven

Berkoff beat Mamet to the fi rst,

no-holds-barred play enacting the

story from the predator’s perspective

with Harvey , a scrappy 45-minute

monologue that was still being

workshopped when it was performed

in February at the Playground theatre

in London. In a static performance,

Berkoff sat in the centre of an almost

bare stage wearing tracksuit bottoms

and T-shirt. Delivering a monologue

that was part-confession, part-

justifi cation of his acts, Berkoff ’s

narcissistic, misogynistic character

attempted to implicate the women

who met him in hotel rooms. The

monologue was interspersed with

bilious summaries of abusive

encounters, from hotel-room assaults

to grim masturbatory episodes.

The staging of Mamet and

Berkoff ’s dramas raised questions of

timing and sensitivity. Did we want

to be inside the head of a sexual

predator at a time when the unheard

stories of women, and victims, were

beginning to be dramatised?

Other directors and playwrights

mobilised plans of action to

foreground women’s perspectives.

Vicky Featherstone, artistic director

of the Royal Court, curated Snatches ,

a series of monologues for BBC4

with an all-female lineup of writers,

K atie Arnstein

tells a story of a day at drama school

when a tutor told her to perform her

graduation show in a bra “because

I’m a blonde with a big chest”. It

is one of several experiences that

informed Arnstein’s solo show Sexy

Lamp , performed at the Edinburgh

fringe this month. The title comes

from writer Kelly Sue DeConnick ’s

theory that, if you can replace a

female character with a lamp and the

story still basically works, maybe you

need another draft.

The Weinstein

scandal inspired

several new plays

• so why are the

most prominent

by men? As the

mogul goes to

trial, Arifa Akbar

gauges theatre’s

response to

#MeToo

PHOTOGRAPHS: TRISTRAM KENTON; MURDO MACLEOD; RICHARD YOUNG/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; JENNY ANDERSON

Clockwise from above,

John Malkovich in

Bitter Wheat; Emilia;

Harvey; The Pussy

Grabber Plays, Katie

Arnstein’s Sexy Lamp

Malcolm dramatised the life of Emilia

Bassano, a poet and contemporary

of William Shakespeare who,

Lloyd Malcolm argues, was the

unacknowledged inspiration for

his plays. Commissioned in 2016,

it was written after the Weinstein

case made headlines , says Burns.

“ Emilia could not get published in

her time because she was a woman.

It’s all about women wanting their

voices to be heard.”

Rose McGowan, who alleges she

was raped by Weinstein, performed

a one-woman show at Edinburgh

this month, tak ing the audience

“on a healing journey of discovery”.

More #MeToo plays by female

writers are in the pipeline. Emily

McLaughlin, head of new work at

the National Theatre, speaks of an

exceptional play in development by

a writer “who has found a brilliant

device to look at sexual abuse and

harassment in the fi lm industry ”.

In the US, there has been an

assortment of #MeToo-related

dramas, including The Pussy

Grabber Plays , inspired by the

stories of women who had accused

Donald Trump of sexual assault or

harassment. Its co-creators, Kate

Pines and Sharyn Rothstein, distilled

their testimonies into drama. “I felt

very much that the women who had

come forward over Trump were the

precursors to the women who came

forward over Weinstein,” says Pines.

“The stories about Trump had been

largely ignored and relegated to

a footnote of the elections.”

Natasha Stoynoff , a journalist

whose story was dramatised in

The Pussy Grabber Plays, thought

it was important for her account

to be preserved in a more complex

way than she had seen it presented

‘There’s a new

anger and

fearlessness’

Dark farce ...

John Malkovich

in Bitter Wheat

Shakespearean

reckoning ...

Saff ron Coomber

and Charity

Wakefi eld

in Emilia

‘My version

of #MeToo’ ...

Katie Arnstein

in Sexy Lamp

directors and actors. Among them

was Compliance, a drama written

by Abi Morgan about a young

female actor meeting a senior

producer in a hotel bedroom to

“run through a scene”. Its lead was

played by Romola Garai, who was

among the fi rst women to speak

out about Weinstein , describing an

audition that took part in his hotel

room at the Savoy when he opened

the door to his room dressed in just

a bathrobe. Garai, 18 at the time,

refl ected on how it left her feeling

“violated” but that such behaviour

was accepted in an industry that was

“very very very misogynistic”.

There were signs of a reckoning

for silenced women from the past,

too, the most prominent of which

was Emilia , co-produced by Nica

Burns, in which Morgan Lloyd

RELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws