Don’t fight witches in fairy tales, but rather: the patriarchy
If we didn’t read fairy tales, we wouldn’t know that good wins over evil, love over hate, and diligence over laziness. The prince comes to save the princess, they get married and live happily ever after. But what if the prince doesn’t come? What if the princess doesn’t want to be saved and what if she doesn’t want to wait anymore? In the play Shooting Snow White, Anna Lisa Grebe from the Accademia Dimitri excels as she takes on various roles, from princess to prince to speaking mirror. She holds up the mirror to society, while she, through physical and mental nudity, shows that gender equality doesn’t exist, even in fairytales.
In the almost horrific beginning, during which Snow White wakes up with tearful movements, she looks like a puppet. She is waiting for her prince, but he still does not arrive. Would he come if she was naked? The author and the only protagonist explains, in a very raw way, how women's bodies are objectified. The exciting and never-ending waiting turns into a painful experience, during which her heart breaks and into a thousand pieces.
What can I say? The princess will have no choice but to take a broom and sweep up her own misery - amplified by the mad screams - by herself. Grebe thus managed to open up thirteenth more chambers in the audience and make them suffer intensely along with her. The atmosphere changes the moment smoke envelops the stage and the distinctive music starts. The sad princess becomes a confident prince who floods the audience with testosterone and foolproof punchlines. This expressive scene is lightened by faithful imagery and the author's improvisation.
She outlines the man’s perspective, which we meet, unfortunately, not only in fairytales. At the same time, she - with a hyperbole - shows the contrast between passivity and naivety that women have, versus the strength and sovereignty which is often connected with men. As a red line, there is one sentence in the whole story: “I wanted to be beautiful.” The main protagonist is naked almost all the time, thanks to which she is able to highlight the pressure which women meet in their everyday lives because of the way they look. And at the same time she is trying to normalise nudity, whether women’s or men’s.
Then she lets the emotions, which have been accumulating during the whole performance, resonate in the audience. If the author had finished the play in the moment in which she is standing on a ladder instead of closing the performance with a mirror scene, she would have been able to cut off the emotions in the right moment. Nevertheless, she got a standing ovation, which she definitely deserved. And then said goodbye with three words - smash the patriarchy.
