Killjoy Theatre’s production of Feminine Rage opens soon at Camden Fringe.
“In the height of the “femicide spike” in Greece, the women that have been silenced permanently by the people they trusted end up in the afterlife, where they meet and create a new home for themselves, a place that will allow them to live and thrive. But what happens when the demons of their past get in the way?”
Where: The Courtyard Theatre
When: 14 – 16 Aug
Ticket link: https://camdenfringe.com/events/feminine-rage/
Writer and co-director of the show, Venice Billia, stopped by to answer some questions.
What is your show about and what inspired it?
The world of the show is a fraction of the afterlife, that is built specifically for women who died of femicide.
We did some extensive research on three true cases of femicide that happened in Greece in the last few years, and we built three characters based on these stories.
These are our three protagonists, and the play explores how they experience the world around them after their death, their relationship to their trauma and to each other.
It’s a journey in which they learn to rely on each other, to be honest and challenge the patriarchal oppression that they’ve been raised to follow blindly.
Much like my characters, destigmatizing victimhood when it comes to abuse was a difficult journey I had to take, one that I’m very grateful to have chosen so early in my life.
I grew up in an environment where abusers were seen as bad people, but at the same time, victims were seen as naive and brainless for putting themselves in that situation.
I had to spend most of my teenage and early adult years debunking that mindset. I went from not feeling particularly proud of being a woman to developing an undying love for women and a passion for telling female stories.
Femicide has been a very big topic in my home country, Greece, over the past few years. Since the pandemic, domestic violence and gender-based hate crimes have been on the rise globally, and in Greece in particular.
There was a point where we would hear about a new case every other week, and know everything about the victims, from what their faces looked like to what their neighbors thought of them and their abusers (it was almost always another rendition of “he was so good, they looked so happy, we would have never guessed”).`
When cases started piling up, I had a lightbulb moment where I thought “what if these women were somewhere in the afterlife, watching what the world is like through a cosmic window?” And the rest is history.
Why should someone book to see your show and what might they expect?
There’s so much to gain. It’s the chance to immerse yourself in a female community, along with a thought-provoking view on the archetypical victim.
None of our characters are perfect victims; they are all deeply flawed and they have so much to offer in the way that they grow as the story progresses.
Other than spreading awareness of a situation that is unknown in this part of the world, there is a lot to learn about how we treat each other as sisters who share the same experience as us.
It sounds dark, but the play has a lot of funny and wholesome “sleepover moments” and moments of just girls being girls. People can expect to feel all kinds of emotions when coming to see our show.
How did you make your start in the business?
I mean, we’re still in that process. We are just putting ourselves out there as much as we can, making our own work and trying our hardest to make people see it.
It’s a brutal process, trying to get noticed when you don’t have an established name. But we have been trying to find the joy in it, and trying to grow as creatives as we do.
Putting on this play has been a huge step for me, and one that has been paired with a lot of rejection and frustration, but it’s also a project that I am immensely proud of and get so much fulfillment out of.
Do you have a favourite type of venue to work in?
I like diverting from the traditional theatre space as much as possible. I am loving thrust spaces at the moment, any way I can get the audience involved into the performance.
But I’d like to challenge myself in any type of venue, like outdoor spaces, non-theatrical spaces, just to explore the possibilities and the creativity found in non-creative spaces.
What’s next for the show?
Who knows! We’re excited to discover what the future of the show will be. What we definitely know for certain is that this isn’t the end of Feminine Rage.
We would love to do a longer run at a theatre and possibly aim to get funding for it.
I already have ideas for ways to expand the worldbuilding, add more characters, and make the story feel more complete.