Manbites makes manly Hello
By: Claire Finch
Issue date: 10/25/07 Section: Recess
Last update: 10/25/07 at 7:53 AM EST
Last update: 10/25/07 at 7:53 AM EST
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Tell anyone that you're going to see a play called Hello Penis: a Man-ifesto and he or she would likely assume that you are seeing either a misogynistic satire or some obscure revival of penis puppetry. In reality, the play, showing Thursday through Saturday at Manbites Dog Theater in Durham, offers a thought-provoking discussion of gender roles and male intimacy, all constructed around the central question of "What does it mean to be a man?"
The cast consists of co-creators Joseph Baker and Kevin Poole, Trinity '98, who play characters named after themselves. The production opens with Joe talking about a dinner party that he's throwing for his 30th birthday. While the actors return to the dinner party scene periodically, the majority of the play consists of scenes where Joe and Kevin interact with each other at ages ranging from six to 31, forging a consistent commentary of what masculinity entails at each level of development.
Hello Penis's main focus is not the plot. Instead, the production is successfully propelled by Baker and Poole's integration of humor, intellectual ideas and dynamic performance techniques. In one scene, Baker and Poole's characters proclaim, "We've been feminized," touching on one of the play's central ideas-how men can understand their masculinity in the wake of a feminist discourse.
"The conversation [addressed in the play] was a lot about how we are not just men but how men are and have been the oppressors for a long time, and also that we don't know how we're oppressing women," Baker said. "We don't know, even now, just sitting here, how we're perpetuating the oppression of women. That started to come into our rehearsal process and our conversations, and we started talking about how we've been 'feminized.' That's sort of a catchphrase we've come up with. We've been raised this way by society, by our parents."
Bake and Poole's attempts to fully define what it is to be men lead to one of the show's most controversial and challenging thoughts, which is the idea that straight white men are oppressed.
The cast consists of co-creators Joseph Baker and Kevin Poole, Trinity '98, who play characters named after themselves. The production opens with Joe talking about a dinner party that he's throwing for his 30th birthday. While the actors return to the dinner party scene periodically, the majority of the play consists of scenes where Joe and Kevin interact with each other at ages ranging from six to 31, forging a consistent commentary of what masculinity entails at each level of development.
Hello Penis's main focus is not the plot. Instead, the production is successfully propelled by Baker and Poole's integration of humor, intellectual ideas and dynamic performance techniques. In one scene, Baker and Poole's characters proclaim, "We've been feminized," touching on one of the play's central ideas-how men can understand their masculinity in the wake of a feminist discourse.
"The conversation [addressed in the play] was a lot about how we are not just men but how men are and have been the oppressors for a long time, and also that we don't know how we're oppressing women," Baker said. "We don't know, even now, just sitting here, how we're perpetuating the oppression of women. That started to come into our rehearsal process and our conversations, and we started talking about how we've been 'feminized.' That's sort of a catchphrase we've come up with. We've been raised this way by society, by our parents."
Bake and Poole's attempts to fully define what it is to be men lead to one of the show's most controversial and challenging thoughts, which is the idea that straight white men are oppressed.
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