Three Old Maids

Writing by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Directed by : Jean-Michel d’Hoop
Traduction : Brontis Jodorowsky

Show created in 2009.

« Three Old Maids » In brief…
This is the story of GARGA, a centennial maid and the 88-year-old twins, GRAZIA and MELIZA, faded aristocrats, decrepit and almost starving, who still believe in Prince Charming.
A roll of the dice will decide who of Grazia or Meliza will go to the ball to find the knight in shining armour who will bring them an offspring and well-being.
Armed with the remains of the false teeth they share, wearing a wig to hide her balding head and a string of faux pearls, Grazia heads off to the ball.
All of this of course will unfold with Jodorowsky’s customary sharp wit.
Meanwhile, Meliza will revisit the ambiguous relationship she had with her father in a dreamlike role play. This childlike role play will soon prove to be dangerous and become a prism through which the unspeakable can be told.
Here the puppets fully come into their own to become a play within the play, to play make-believe, working to confuse the audience and the actors between fiction and reality, embodiment and distancing, manipulation and submission.
Grazia comes back worse than ever: unmasked and humiliated by the crowd, she didn’t even manage to scrounge a few appetizers.
The old maids feel the end is close (and they are starving!). While they teeter on the brink of despair, suddenly a miracle happens! Fiction or reality?

An intriguing canvas for taxidermist actors, puppets and assorted objects, which can hold its head high when compared to either Goya’s monsters or to surrealists of all kinds. A polysemic tale reminding us that we should not always trust appearances, family stories, clichés and other props of convenience.
A fable that gets to the bottom of myths, by dissecting them, chewing them over, ruminating them again and again to generate a new pulp and to extract new meanings in a carnival-like ritual.