While the cast and crew are all feminists, the real “f” word in a new play at Bats Theatre, is fun. You might be able to tell that by its name.
MINGE minge minge minge minge. Minge. Miiiiiiiiinge.
What this isn’t is a superficial attempt to draw you into a smutty article. Although the word may make you cringe, guffaw or withdraw in terror, this is our attempt to make it just another word, as attempted with the C-word song in the Vagina Monoglogues, sung with loud abandon by entire audiences around the world.
Minge is both a slang word for the “nether regions of a lady” and the name of a new play on the celebration of modern Wellington women and their stories.
“The word minge has been reclaimed. I like it because it’s a silly word and we’re here to have fun,” says Fiona McNamara, director.
The show Minge started as a discussion group between female friends involved in theatre.
“We spent about a year talking about issues we’d encountered in rehearsal rooms with mixed genders, and then specific issues that were part of our being women.”
Topics included motherhood, abortion, sex, body image, men, family, education, and aspirations. While some topics are in their nature dark, they have been tackled in a way that gets everyone onside – that is, through making them laugh.
“Above all the play’s going to be very fun. Anyone afraid of word feminism should get over that, the show’s message is more: ‘Yay! We’re women!’.”
There was something very interesting about working in an all-woman environment which, she says, is uncommon in theatre.
“In projects with mixed genders and especially in the devising room, male voices often drown out female voices. Of course, that’s not true 100% of the time, but it was definitely something we’d all noticed.”
Male dominance in cross-gender conversation is a trend supported by research, with men displaying tendencies to interrupt and overlap women significantly more than vice versa.
Another trend the group wanted to address was the narrow set of roles and characters offered to female actors.
“It’s widely accepted that there are only a certain number of female roles. There’s the old crone, the mother, the virgin and the whore. There’s the manic pixie dream-girl, like Kate Winslet in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And there’s the fat girl, who gets to sit in the background and eat chips while the rest of the cast have boyfriends and achieve things.”
Consequently Ally Garrett, who’s in the show, has found this broader representation difficult.
“We set out to do this amazing thing: looking into womanhood in New Zealand, but at end of day you can’t speak for every woman,” she says. “What we can do is try to speak truthfully for ourselves.”
Stories that couldn’t fit into the show itself have been compiled into a Minge-a-zine, which will be sold on the night.
“A lot of the stories relate to food and sex. It seems food and sex are what keeps the world going round.”
There’s also a song dedicated to each in the show.
“We want to make people think, but we also want it to be a rip-roaring time filled with song and dance. If you can make somebody laugh about something, you’ve already made them think about it.”
Minge, 7pm, Bats Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace, December 1-11.