《n个女人的独白》是一部以反映当代女性生存境况为题材的编作剧场作品。剧本的创作基于不同年龄、职业、文化背景的女性的真实成长经历,融入舞蹈、戏剧、音乐、诗歌等元素,希望呈现中国女性成长过程中真实的困境、挣扎与希望。我们希望这部戏剧既是一面真实客观的镜子,也是一种坚强有力的声音。
Monologues of n Women is a devised theatre piece with a topic of reflecting the dilemmas that women face in modern society. The creation of the script is based on real-life experiences of women of different ages, occupations, and cultural backgrounds, combined with dance, drama, music, and poetry aspects. We wish to present the real obstacles, struggles and hopes that Chinese women had growing up. We also hope that this show is both a true and objective mirror and a strong and powerful voice.
戏剧人,心理咨询师,学生,软件工程师,项目经理,法式博饼店主……我们在社会上有很多不同的身份,但我们都共享一个身份——女性。这是我们共同创作的戏剧作品,这里有我们的痛苦和欢乐,我们的音乐和舞蹈。欢迎你,来聆听我们的故事。
Theatre artist, therapist, student, software engineer, project manager, French crepe shop owner… We have many identities in society. However, most of us share an identity – women. This is a theatrical work that we’ve created collectively. This is where our pains and joys, music and dances lie. Welcome to come to listen to our stories.
The team behind Monologues of n Women resides in various cities across the US and Europe, but all share the experience of sitting between Chinese and Western cultures, with much of the team having grown up in China. Thus, Monologues of n Women will be in Chinese, and English translations will be incorporated seamlessly into the set design.
Monologues of n Women has received grant funding from 4Culture, the US-China Education Trust, and the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, as well as crowdfunding from a successful Kickstarter campaign. The world premiere of Monologues of n Women will be at Seattle’s Theatre Puget Sound Theatre 4 on September 16th, 2022.
Thank you for coming to see Monologues of n Women. I want to tell you how it all got started.
An hour and forty-eight minutes away from my mother’s hometown is a town called Fengxian. Numerous women have been trafficked there for forced marriages and forced childbearing. In February of
2022, one such woman was found there chained up in a shed, and her story went viral. Outraged at the news, I shared it with my family and my mother told me that she almost got trafficked as well when she was in her 20s. She said she escaped thanks to
her own quick thinking, but was it not just luck? If the man had been armed, if there had been more of them, nothing could have saved her.
That night, I was tossing and turning in bed reflecting on my own life growing up. Compared to the chained woman, I am extremely lucky. Yet, I still experience countless invisible chains weaving their way into all aspects of my life. Those misogynistic words and ideas from parents, teachers, and media shaped my worldview before I could even understand them. With that revelation, I decided that I want to use theatre as a tool to document the chained
woman and our collective trauma, to explore what it’s like to be a “woman”. I didn’t expect there to be so many people who feel the same way and would volunteer to create the show together. We are all passionate, sincere, and dedicated and we bonded over our shared experience.
We have many things that we want to express but it’s impossible to put it all in a two-hour show. We hope that Monologues of n Women is just the beginning. The beginning of everyone expressing and resonating, of listening and being heard, of embracing our emotions, no matter whether it’s painful or joyful,
and of healing.
Christie Zhao
The creating process is about listening to differentvoices and letting them be heard. One person mightnot be able to fight against the world but can seek to find a balance in the “ecosystem” around her. I hope this piece could somehow support your own journey.
Siming Lu
Women are experiencing a group identity crisis. The struggle is not only between the waves of ideological iterations, but also the gap between individual ideals and reality. Men are born while women are made, gazed and shaped. What kind of person can a woman who is completely unsculpted grow into? Before we have the wisdom to answer that question, we must learn about the invisible but unneglectable contexts, the stamp of times under the scrape of history, the deconstruction and reconstruction within a society framework, the order and disorder, and the
resilience and resilience of living individuals. We must never acquiesce to a society of collective aphasia, nor foster a monistic value, and more importantly, we must keep discovering and questioning how we individuals reflect the world and how the world reflects our true self.
Melanie Zeng
We interviewed 40 women of different ages and careers and asked them to describe women in three words. This is what we created based on the answers.
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