Manic Maids

Jean Genet's The Maids is an eerie play.

Genet wrote the play in 1947.

The play is being currently staged on Broadway (at the Red Bull Theatre) and an apt one-line teaser for the play goes thus: "When the Madam's away, the maids play..."

And what a play the maids play! The description of Genet's play-within-the-play is as follows:

Claire and Solange are maids, sick to the gullet of being scuffed under the heels of their lady mistress. In a twisted evening of power-shifting role play, the two girls bite and scratch at one another in a vicious struggle to the top – a ritualistic tug-of-war which must finally end in silence or in sacrifice.

A turbulent exploration of the games we play, this classic French play was written by Jean Genet, a controversial figure whose work was subsequently banned in Australia and elsewhere around the world. Considered by many to be his finest and most monstrous creations, Genet’s naughty maids allow him to aim the barrel at class, criminality, sex and power.

The ritualistic game that the maids of the upper-class French socialite play, allow the humiliated and the subordinated of society to exorcise the ghosts of these burdens. The exorcism rituals are reminiscent of the "games" slaves used to play, especially in Francophone colonies of the Caribbean Island, like Haiti. The slaves, it is said, would suffer abjection throughout the day and at night, the off-duty servants would role-play. Some would play masters while others would play the slaves and the former would subject the latter to the horrors that they themselves would be subjected to in real life. This was a survival kit for the slaves. Pent-up anger and a pervasive sense of powerlessness is best expended in play.