The Hidden Goddess: Farce and Feminine Agency in Drinking Habits

Drinking habits, a farce involving nuns, mistaken identities, and disguise comedy is being staged by Morpheus Theatre at the Pump House Theatre from the 4th to the 12th of October. The play begins with two nuns Sister Augusta and Sister Philamena, who have been covertly making wine, under the guise of making grape juice, to support the struggling Catholic convent. The moonshining operation is done without the knowledge of their strict, yet benevolent, mother superior, resulting in a febrile hotbed of lies, deceptions and all-round madness. Father Chenelle, a local priest is a frequent visitor to the convent, lending to the comedic logic of the play by being oblivious and clueless to events within the convent.

The setting of the convent lends itself to wider philosophical analysis. The convent is a microcosmic reflection of a celestial order where the sacred reveals itself through rituals and symbols. Everything in this order, living or non-living becomes a conduit for divine meaning. The convent represents the sacred, dedicated to faith, order, and spirituality. In this metaphysical model, everything is exactly where it should be, across a great chain of being. The illicit winemaking represents a profane activity one that contradicts the convent’s sacred orders. The tension between the sacred duties of the nuns and the winemaking creates a series of comedic events where the sacred and the profane collide. The comical unloosening of the sacred order in the convent is demonstrative of a dramatic equation that has expressed itself across countless works of art; inversion and excess, chaos as a powerful reorganizing force and renewal.

Sally and Paul, two reporters with an amorous history, arrive at the convent to confirm rumors of the wine-making activity and hope to break a big story. Amongst them, Sally is the more hard-nosed and pragmatic one, representing in the philosophical context of the play the profane logic of rationalism. This is an approach that contrasts sharply with the faith-based worldview of the convent. This theme is never openly explored in the play, it is a farce and has not been designed to do that. Nonetheless, through the dramatic ironies of the comedy, the meaning rises to the surface, very, very quietly, beneath the laughter. The contradictory attitudes of these worldviews are emblematized in Immanuel Kant’s (German philosopher) exhortation of the primacy of reason (Sapere Audre – dare to know) and Blaise Pascal’s (French Polymath) view of its limitations, “the heart has its reason which reason knows nothing of…We know the truth not only by the reason, but by the heart.” During the play, we gradually see the reporters starting to explore their unresolved matrimonial history and see Sally’s self-interest (she is a serial careerist) slowly give way to concern for the convent. At a deeper level, Sally represents modernity’s skepticism of faith-based systems or systems in general that cannot be explained within the confines of rational self-interest. This is an endlessly interesting theme, it throws into sharp focus the bureaucratic reasoning of a world that has potentially been demagified (stripped of its magic and transcendence), a world where meaning is no longer discovered in the gap between the finite and infinite but in scientific instruments, municipal records, and legal registries. In the end, she has a ‘road to Damascus’ moment, where she drops the story and preserves the dignity of the convent. At a metaphorical level, this certainly represents the pull and push between rational self-interest and empathy. This theme is certainly an important one in the age we live in, what is the role of reason and empathy in cultivating selfhood, robust societies, and communities? Ones where reason and empathy are not seen as mutually antagonistic. The sisters at the convent may not have the urbaneness or education of the journalists but they see a world charged with metaphysical meaning and potential, one where at the very bottom of existence is not to be found facts, theoretical principles, and causal mechanisms, but rather in the words of Gerald Manley, the “dearest freshness deep down things.” The saying, cling to the faith of old women, may seem regressive until we start to see what a world removed of it (faith) starts to look like. None of this implies that empathy is the product of religious faith, we seem to have thankfully moved past that notion as a species, what it does imply though is that we need not give over completely to the mysticism of numbers and the Empire of Reason. That it is still possible for us to create cultural environments free from the overwhelming influence of Algorithmic and mechanistic modes of reasoning. Admittedly, I look hard for cultural themes of resistance even where none can be distinctly found, the convent (all the dramatic anxiety notwithstanding), potentially emerges as a site of quiet rebellion against the techno-rationalism of modernity. A space, where in the words of T.S. Eliot, it remains as the stillness of a turning world. Of course, it is not this simple, all dramatic pieces are awash with contradictory themes. The commodification of a sacred symbol, the wine, by the convent can also be seen as a critique of the circularity of religious justification (we must make wine to support the convent's mission, and any activity that supports our activity is and will be justified), even sacred values are subject to brute market forces and cynical self-interest. Underscoring the fact that the self-serving mendaciousness that has historically been exhibited by religious institutions puts many a modern financial and bureaucratic institution to shame.

The convent labors under the misapprehension that the outsiders are spies sent from Rome; a legitimate concern given the Catholic Church’s historical suspicion of doctrinal innovations that emerged from convents. Where there is a surfeit of purity there is a surfeit of suspicion, mirroring the notion that heaven is an impossible ideal. No matter how devout or pious, everyone in that convent remains fundamentally lacking to the divine ideal. There is a foundational gap of being. In between the frailties and fractures of the human experience and the insuperable demands of relentless worship, a great gulf of anxiety resides. Historically this anxiety has been played out in multiple plays, the most inhuman being the depraved brutalization of women during the witch trials, and the most liberatory being carnivalesque subversions. Festivals that took place right under the nose of the church. They were cultural events in Europe that suspended the normative and social order for short periods; inverting social hierarchies; gender roles, and moral expectations. Perceptions around the body were also reconstructed, embracing a sense of Grotesque realism, accurately depicted in Hieronymus Bosch paintings, where the erotic and lower features of the body are explored through surreal themes. The body during these cultural carnivals was no longer seen as a prison for the spirit, open to moral perfidy and corruption. Rather it was seen as porous, connected, and grounded with the cyclical nature of the earth. There was a paganistic reclamation of bodily agency, one in which identity was no longer tethered to static ideas of identity. Identity through this open prism is seen as infinitely mutable, the boundaries between the world and the self blur. I could not help seeing this theme when Sally and Paul are compelled to change in and out of the vestments of the Church throughout the play, signifying the carnivalesque playfulness around identity. The monastic convent has ironically become a space where new identities are explored. Here, fixed notions of identity give way to the performative conditions in which identity is adorned, discarded and re-adorned. The symbols of sacredness become instruments of profane transformation, throwing into sharp relief the paradox of self-discovery, and how it is done through the cyclical actions of becoming, un-becoming, becoming, and so on. In this model of the universe, the sacred and the profane start to merge and become whole.

True to the spirit of upheaval and inversion in the play, the depiction of wine is creatively used to re-symbolize its centrality as the Christian Eucharist into a Dionysian/Bacchus Eucharist (Graeco-Roman God of wine and excess). Wine is no longer used to signify sacrifice and self-mortification, rather it becomes an agent of chaotic liberation, one that accelerates the characters towards a necessary reckoning. For example, one of the nuns, Mary Catherine is a novice who rediscovers her love for George the groundskeeper, which potentially encapsulates a very interesting theme, the reclamation of feminine autonomy in a Patriarchal institution, the Church. We see here a rejection of the passive role expected of her, confirming that she has an alternative identity outside of her religious identity. Her choices could be seen as a rejection of the ascetic and life-denying environment of the convent. George's vocation, close to nature, is potentially also a symbolic representation of the profane. He introduces a primal, paganistic, energy into a celibate environment, symbolizing a vitalizing force that slowly erodes the boundaries between the sacred and the profane in the convent.

A contradictory feminine theme to Mary Catherine's though, is; we find out that the Mother Superior and Father Chenelle were once married, experienced a tragedy/accident, did not know that they were both alive, sought spiritual solace in the bosom of the church and through a chaotic sequence of events in the play have rediscovered their children are in fact Paul & Sister Mary Catherine. Even in the heart of this comedy, we encounter a deep theme around how the redemptive power of faith (whatever the brand and type) potentially helps us overcome cataclysmic grief. We see many types and forms of feminine agency in this play. Some like Mary Catherine will renounce the sterility of the convent, and others like Mother Superior will embrace it to heal a broken spirit. Sally too, a fierce independent woman may give way to embracing a monotheistic worldview of love and matrimony. These characters will speak for themselves, they want what they want, and they all embody the radical boundlessness of feminine choice.

Underneath all of these expressions lies a unifying force, what I call the hidden goddess, an archetype revealing herself through the gradual unfolding of the characters’ inner lives. Mary Catherine’s embrace of illicit desire, Mother Superior’s maternal reconciliation with her past, and Sally’s embodying of the conflict between reason and empathy- each of these journeys are quietly guided by the presence of the hidden Goddess. She is the embodiment of the complex spectrum of feminine qualities; feral intuition, radical desire, maternal love, anarchical autonomy, liberatory agency, libidinal power, savage cunning, etc. Interpreted at this level, the play is very, very appealing to me, as a reclamation of the stage by women, and an emphatic exhibition of feminine power. The complexity of femininity seen through this theme widens our social imagination around womanhood, appreciating that femininity defies description and categorization, continuously evolving beyond the boundaries of the sacred and the profane.

All that being said, I do not think this script was the right fit….......

I have tried to see where interesting themes may exist in the play to render the best interpretation of the script possible. That being said, the success of a farce ultimately comes down to comedic execution and timing.   

The script’s comedic effectiveness and structural cohesion are not quite on point. The comedy feels diluted, and the characters seem broadly drawn, lacking the spontaneity and sharpness of form and definition found in other works of the genre. The wit and situational humor in the play do not seem like other more successful farces. The progression of scenes is disjointed, and the situational setups seem to fall short of delivering the sort of impactful twists that define staple farcical narratives. The irony is underdeveloped, and the comedic rhythm seem to blunt the impact of intended jokes. The ending felt disorganized, and while farces radically embrace the absurd, good ones exhibit a comedic resolution that is commensurate to the action and intensity that precedes it. As stated above, what I absolutely loved about the play was the fact that it creates a centerstage space for women, this is something that has been woefully lacking in the slapstick and farce genre. The social function of the script is excellent, foregrounding and socializing the experiences of women. There needs to be more of this, much, much more of this. That being said, the technical function of the script is below par. Also, I felt like there was no strong, centripetal vision holding the play together, either through distinct styles, themes, or conceptual framing. The production felt like it was missing an auterial influence, bereft of a strong creative force. For example, the scenes between the reporters, when they are contending with their unresolved feelings, could have been played with a bit more depth, and could have been less rushed. As someone in the audience, I was interested in seeing how the characters would move towards that resolution, a dynamic like that is always beautiful to see on stage. Granted, it is not Romeo and Juliet, but it is exactly that layer of complexity that elevates the situational comedy. Ironically, it is those non-comedic pieces and scenes that, sometimes, quietly electrify a comedy. The blocking in certain sections of the play did not seem complete or coordinated, this reduced the efficacy of the physical comedy.

There were some very endearing moments in the play, the pantomime sequence, the spirited interactions of the Sisters and Mother Superior, the reporters, all brought energy to the stage. When evaluated through community theatre standards though, the play felt unfinished, lacking a veneer of completeness.  

Rating – 5/10