Two young women are working out in a gym, causing and feeling pain, but in a good way.
Katie and Anastasia are childhood friends, but their lives have taken them in very different directions and to different relationships with pain. ‘You get used to it’ as Anastasia says when we see them as children as she hits her friend with a skipping rope. The two knock their bruises together in a form of union.
On a minimalist set and costumed mainly in sportswear, they explore the ‘complex and subjective experience’ of pain. A voiceover sometimes breaks in to give scientific data on the nature of pain.
In one of two solo scenes, Katie, played by Catherine Abigail Ward, excruciatingly pricks all up her legs with needles in order to acclimatise herself to higher degrees of pain. We find, in conversation with her friend, that this is how she deals with some unspecified childhood trauma.
The whole perception of pain is questioned as we are told how ‘pain can feel good’. We are watching how a complete pain system is developed by each of these two women.
In her solo scene Anastasia, played by Anna María, tests different sizes of dialators in order to prepare her vagina for sex which she, after having been violently raped, associates with pain. She wants it to be a normal activity as it used to be.
Katie has a masochistic relationship with a man which only sometimes involves pain, they do vanilla sex too. In a line which goes to the heart of the tension between them, Anastasia bitterly tells her friend, ‘We don’t all get the luxury of choosing when sex hurts.’
Each of them talk to a medical professional about their pain, Katie to someone in the NHS, Anastasia as a private patient. Neither receive any proper understanding from the listener, nor obtain the expert help they need. They have to experience more pain to deal with their individual traumatic experiences.
In this physical theatre, the programme notes say MASO SCHISM ‘grapples with the complexity of female masochism’ and it certainly does that. This short piece is pared down to the single exploration of pain. Its role in trauma is not fully explored, however, and it may be that this challenging piece, first developed as part of the Lab Works festival at RADA, could be expanded to a longer play.
Drama
Cast and Creatives: Anna María, Catherine Abigail Ward
Production Company: Running With Scissors
Performance Dates: 4th and 8th November 2024
Performance: 8.45pm Running Time: 1 hour