LEDA AND THE RAGE by Edith Podesta

“Braving a Raging Storm“

Reviewer: Lee Shu Yu 
Performance: 26 April 2018

Edith Podesta’s Leda and the Rage impresses with its staging of sexual violence and trauma. Seen in the light of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, this performance is vital viewing.

Leda and the Rage plunges face first into grimy detail. The play’s opening frame is set as a university module about trauma in art and literature. Podesta plays the lecturer, herself coping with a dark past, while Jeremiah Choy plays her therapist. As the two flit from mythology to memory on stage, shadow-interpreters Jun An and Amirah Osman complete the picture.

The title comes from a story in Greek Mythology, where young Leda is raped by Zeus in the form of a swan. The story is often romanticised as a ‘seduction’.  In this performance, the lecturer invokes Suzanna, Daphne, Philomela who suffer the same fate. I am immediately reminded that for all these mythological names that are known, so many more real names go unheard.

Fact and fiction bleed into each other. The dramatic sequences are spliced with statistics and rape apologist assertions. From rape culture, to childhood trauma and terrorism, the audience is never once allowed to forget the extent of the objectification and violence.

There is no breathing room between fragments as the audience is herded along the recesses of the survivor’s mind. The show is an hour and a half of claustrophobia, with all the frenzied haziness and excruciating detail of nightmares.

Despite the horror, Leda and the Rage remains tragically beautiful.

Podesta’s usual verbosity is effective. Her spoken word captures the sensation of a lump in one’s throat that finally spits back at the patriarchy. Even so, the words are a salve and an ode to survivors; it is equal parts formidable and gut-wrenching.

Besides making the play more accessible, the two shadow-interpreters from the Singapore Association of the Deaf are themselves stage players. The corporeal beauty of the sign language is at the forefront. This extra layer of stage business adds commentary about the dislocation of mind, body and experience.

At times, Choy sounds hesitant and lacks the lyricism needed for the text, but the performers are well-supported by the design. The grey set resembles a tomb, its various catches and transformations remind one of a pocket knife. This fortress is often shaken by uncanny multimedia, sound and lighting design and I constantly feel like I am clinging on to driftwood in open waters.

As the lights fade out on the last scene, the audience’s discomfort and exhaustion is palpable; one must take a breath to contemplate the weight of the work.

All things considered, Leda and the Rage is accomplished, fierce and constructive. By presenting solutions in the play and beyond – a post-show dialogue with relevant professionals and an information sheet about sexual violence – Leda and the Rage does not just promise a night of thoughtful theatre, but attempts to rattle the shackles of indifference that paralyses us as a society.