Players' open feminist theatre
By Aaron Feldman
Lance Writer
January 23, 2008
 Last Friday, the University Players premiered Men: Oink Oink, the latest production of famed playwright Dr. Gyna Wallace, in the Jackman Centre’s Studio Theatre. The actors performed the 4-hour play, also directed by Wallace, to a sold-out crowd. Edgy, empowering, and often quite violent, MOO is one of those plays that, according to Wallace’s notes in the program, “isn’t afraid to address the harsh realities to which our sisters must awaken if we hope to win the gender war.”
In terms of plot, MOO is decidedly sparse (it is summed up in the program with one word: ‘Justice’). The play opens with Moon Mother (played impeccably by Merryn Renshaw) entering the stage and declaring that there is a disease in the theatre, one that has been choking humanity for millions of years. That disease, she concludes, is the penis. She then sends her messengers, Truth (Stéphanie Carpanini) and Liberty (Rebecca Charron) into the audience to bring several of its male members up on stage. For the remaining 3 hours and 54 minutes, the trio uses the selected audience members as “examples”, subjecting them to various painful humiliations. According to Liberty’s first monologue, delivered in between kicks, the audience members “had it coming to [them] for a while”.
In the program, Wallace, whose past works include Caryl Churchill: Misogynist and the hit musical Klit!, addresses a few of her critics. “People have accused my plays of containing ‘Man-Hate,’” she writes, “which is absurd, of course, because the term ‘Man-Hate’ is in itself redundant.”
The production, quite simply, is flawless. From the opening monologue to the play’s abrupt ending with the arrival of paramedics, MOO held me in its thrall.
Although the play appears to have been divisive among audience members, its importance in the world of theatre, and indeed society as a whole, cannot be denied. According to one awestruck audience member, “I have a feeling that for the next little while, feminists are only going to be saying one thing, and that thing is MOO.”
He has not been seen since.
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