Review: "Luisa" Finds the Courage to Speak Out
Luisa
Written and performed by Bruna Braidotti
Presented by Compagnia di Arti e Mestieri
May 4, 2023 at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU, 24 W 12th St, Manhattan, NYC
May 9, 2023 at TheaterLab, 357 W 36th St 3rd floor, Manhattan, NYC
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Bruna Braidotti. Photo by Giorgio Russo. |
We first meet Luisa as a child who is beginning to act out, breaking the aforementioned doll, doing worse in school, worrying about getting fat and feeling dirty, and so on. Another behavior that gets Luisa in trouble relates, with apt symbolism, to her Biblically-inspired desire for a cleansing flood. Braidotti presents most of this from the points of view of Luisa's mother and father, distinguished by their voices but also by the position of the swivel chair in which Braidotti sits. As we encounter older versions of Luisa, we continue to do so primarily through the eyes of others, specifically men with whom she becomes romantically involved. Yet another shrewd use of recurring symbolism enters here in Luisa's dislike of having curtains; and as the show moves towards a climactic, confrontational, and cathartic conversation with her mother, the balance of the performance shifts towards Luisa's own voice.
Braidotti ushers the audience through Luisa's story and its emotional ebbs and flows with assured skill, her mutable performance complemented at times by assertively colored lighting. In a short post-show Q&A, Braidotti said that she wrote the show in the 1990s, when intrafamilial sexual abuse was rarely discussed, with a close friend who went through what Luisa experiences, and she highlighted the theme of the solidarity, or the lack thereof between women, mentioning that she has gotten pushback over the years from audience members over the play's messages. Maybe such reactions should not be shocking, but one suspects that the dynamics of complicity that Luisa tackles remain in need of exposure and critique nearly as much now as they were when the show was written.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
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