Malleus Malefgicarum. The new pact.
performance
director: Iveta Pole
Video: Katrina neiburga
Sound: Maarja nuut
the Latvian National Theatre Award SpElmanu Nakts for Best Large-Format Performance 2023
created & performed by:
Iveta Pole, Katrina Neiburga, Agnese Krivade, Jette Loona Hermanis, Anika Barkan (Denmark), Lea Blau (Croatia), Maarja Nuut (Estonia), Martina Georgina (Malta), Irena Grauda
Costumes:Kristians Aglonietis, Anna Ansone
Lighting designer:Karolin Tamm (Estonia)
Premiere 3 June 2023, Riga Circus
Produced by:
INITIUM, Ieva Niedre, Minna Triin Kohv, Karina Zeļonka.
Costumes:Kristians Aglonietis, Anna Ansone
Lighting designer:Karolin Tamm (Estonia)
Premiere 3 June 2023, Riga Circus
Produced by:
INITIUM, Ieva Niedre, Minna Triin Kohv, Karina Zeļonka.
supported by:
State Culture Capital Foundation, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, KRASO foundation, Riga Circus, British Council Latvia.
Malleus Maleficarum. The new pact.
On 3 June 2023 at 19.00, Riga Circus we premiered " Malleus Maleficarum, The new pact. "- a Latvian and Estonian co-production by director Iveta Pole and seven other artists. ".
Written in 1486, Malleus Maleficarum, or "The Hammer of witches", was for centuries the world's best-selling book after the Bible. This book develops a legal-theological theory about the nature of women, portraying them as the inverted mirror of the normal (male) world and proving that women are inherently dangerous and untrustworthy. The most abominable of them are concubines, followed by midwives, and finally wives who rule over their husbands. "When a woman thinks , she thinks evil", writes Heinrich Kramer.
On 3 June 2023 at 19.00, Riga Circus we premiered " Malleus Maleficarum, The new pact. "- a Latvian and Estonian co-production by director Iveta Pole and seven other artists. ".
Written in 1486, Malleus Maleficarum, or "The Hammer of witches", was for centuries the world's best-selling book after the Bible. This book develops a legal-theological theory about the nature of women, portraying them as the inverted mirror of the normal (male) world and proving that women are inherently dangerous and untrustworthy. The most abominable of them are concubines, followed by midwives, and finally wives who rule over their husbands. "When a woman thinks , she thinks evil", writes Heinrich Kramer.
"The Hammer of witches" was widely used in witch trials around the world, but it is not a book about "witches", but about women, and is now seen as a precursor of Western misogyny. One of the conclusions of a major study by the University of Brussels on the history of the phenomenon from antiquity to the present: the image of the witch, the aesthetics and the myths of what witches do were created by men in positions of power in the Middle Ages. Some phenomena, such as the witches' sabbath, probably never had a counterpart in reality.
Our team, in reading this book, first of all asked ourselves about the future. Who will we be when it's all over? There is a widespread awakening from the distorted self-image of the 'male gaze', from the binaries of male/female territories, a reclamation of space and autonomy, an unlearning of the centuries-old hatred of the female or feminine body, mind and qualities. Contemporary feminism mostly defines itself in a conversation about what a woman is NOT, deconstructing the narratives created by patriarchy, yet what we were most interested in is what she IS. Let's call it post-apocalyptic feminism. Who was she before Malleus Maleficarum - and who will she be after, when there is nothing left to fight against?
Our team, in reading this book, first of all asked ourselves about the future. Who will we be when it's all over? There is a widespread awakening from the distorted self-image of the 'male gaze', from the binaries of male/female territories, a reclamation of space and autonomy, an unlearning of the centuries-old hatred of the female or feminine body, mind and qualities. Contemporary feminism mostly defines itself in a conversation about what a woman is NOT, deconstructing the narratives created by patriarchy, yet what we were most interested in is what she IS. Let's call it post-apocalyptic feminism. Who was she before Malleus Maleficarum - and who will she be after, when there is nothing left to fight against?
Director Iveta Pole:
"This story starts from the end. We go back in time, we bring ourselves back to the primordial, we suck ourselves back into the womb with a vacuum cleaner, before the time when the mark of shame was put on women's bodies and minds. Kramer wrote that he had met women more bitter than death. We want to eat something sweet, like an apple. To go back to the time before light was separated from darkness. To pull at the threads held by archetypes and stereotypes, the threads that eventually lead to our bodies. Kramer wrote that woman was created from a bent rib. She is the imperfect animal, completed by the animal itself. She is the rib that keeps on spinning".
"This story starts from the end. We go back in time, we bring ourselves back to the primordial, we suck ourselves back into the womb with a vacuum cleaner, before the time when the mark of shame was put on women's bodies and minds. Kramer wrote that he had met women more bitter than death. We want to eat something sweet, like an apple. To go back to the time before light was separated from darkness. To pull at the threads held by archetypes and stereotypes, the threads that eventually lead to our bodies. Kramer wrote that woman was created from a bent rib. She is the imperfect animal, completed by the animal itself. She is the rib that keeps on spinning".
