Jouissance Theater's first show, Every Girl Gets Her Man, goes up in March at the Soho Playhouse!
Five young women on the prowl for the perfect man get taken for the ride of their lives in this dark comedy about love, friendship and the redemptive power of delusion. Think Carrie Bradshaw on a blind date with Samuel Beckett!
Written by Emma Sheanshang
Directed by Michael Melamedoff
For tickets call: 212 691 1555 or visit www.sohoplayhouse.com
"Jouissance"
The effort of holding up the imaginary barriers between experience and imagination, past and present, intellect and desire, theory and violence, has been tiring people out for millennia, leaving them little energy for pleasure. Jouissance is the total ecstasy that comes when we abandon this effort.
The word "jouissance" contains within it a play on words: "J’ ouis sens" = "I heard meaning". It is the pleasure of the intellect and the intellect of pleasure.
Theatrical Jouissance
In a world where an epic (or, one could argue, an early form of the novel) has structured entire civilizations’ lives, inner-lives and grandest edifices; created wars, identities and labor forces; destroyed relationships, instincts and cities—the distinction between the "symbolic" and the "real" is not tenable. Given this as a starting point, what can theater not do?
Jouissance Theater is:
The reveling in the imaginative nature of all reality: What are gods and goddesses but they who were created out of pure idea?!
The elation of the traveler snatching glimpses of landscape through the train window, deaf to the “are we there yet?” of the unhappy.
The perplexed student’s relief when his professor tells him, “Stop saying you don’t understand. You understand perfectly. You are just resisting it. You simply want it not to be so.”
The emotion of the vigorous poet when he realizes there is no veil to lift.
The emotion of a New York Times democrat when she discovers that she finds southern republicans sexy.
The emotion of the 21st century New Yorker when she realizes that she’s spent most of her life in Victorian London.
The emotion of the lover when he realizes that he fell in love with his beloved because she reminded him of a character in a play he saw in his youth.
The emotion of the beloved when he realizes that he is "merely" an idea in the mind of his lover. (What are gods and goddesses but they who were fashioned of pure idea?!)
The emotion of the historian who, having long ago laid aside the novels and poems of his youth to devote himself to the French Revolution, realizes that he hasn’t, after all, abandoned fiction!
Not so much “pleasure, as the consciousness that one has of it.” (Philippe Sollers)
03.20.08
offoffbway.com praises Every Girl Gets Her Man!!
“Great accolades are due to the writer, director and wonderful cast.”
“This is a worthwhile endeavor to come check out and furthermore it is funny, well written and expertly acted by the entire ensemble.”
“The dialogue is infinitely amusing, penned and delivered with intelligence in tempo and momentum, the set design is sufficiently sparse (a table at a Manhattan-café), and the casting works wonders.”
Read the full review here.
03.15.08
Every Girl gets its Kudos!
HX magazine calls Every Girl Gets Her Man "refreshingly dark", noting that "all five actresses shine". Read the full review here.
NYCvisit.com gives Every Girl Gets Her Man four out of five stars!!
08.15.07
Jouissance hits the stage
Jouissance Theater will be presenting sixteen performances of Every Girl Gets Her Man starting in early March at the Soho Playhouse. Check back soon for details.