© Mark Hamilton

The Chair Women

Touring production for Autumn 2004
Written by Werner Schwab
Directed by Katarzyna Deszcz in association with Gráinne Byrne and Gavin Quinn

Scarlet Theatre invites you to play their TV studio audience and witness the filming of three ageing friends. While unaware of the cameras, the women marvel at the Pope on their scrap heap telly and prattle on about their paltry lives. One is at the mercy of her monstrous son, the other is a martyr to her dirty dog, while the third is a devout toilet cleaner. Fuelled by drink they share a fantasy of a country Gala where each competes for her 15 minutes of fame. But when real life destroys their dream real violence ensues……..

The Play
The Chair Women is David Hale’s translation of Die Präsidentinnen by the Austrian playwright Werner Schwab, whose stylized and comical re-invention of the German language helped establish him as an exciting new dramatist of the early 1990’s. Through his highly idiosyncratic use of explicit subject matter and vulgar language, he set out to confront notions of good taste. Schwab died at the age of 36, before the critical world had become accustomed to his provocative style and cynical attitude towards the suburban provincial Austria he satirized. The Chair Women is a highly surrealistic appraisal of bourgeois society in which the characters’ fantasies are just as present as their realities.

Use of Film
Thanks to funding from the European Commission’s Culture 2000, Scarlet Theatre has created the production in collaboration with Pan Pan, Ireland and Katarzyna Deszcz and Andrzej Sadowski from the Ludowy Theatre, Poland. By presenting the play in the context of a television studio and through mixing live and recorded footage, The Chair Women attempts to hold a mirror up to the viewing public’s current obsession with the misrepresented world of 'Reality TV'.

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