Mara Korper

Futuristic – set in the year of 3033 - Mara Korper is a lively dystopic feminist play about an austere religious order ruled by “The Mother” administration, written and directed by Jayde Kirchert and presented by Citizen Theatre at Theatre Works.

Kirchert has written a modern feminist science fiction play centred on a corrupt bureaucracy in an all-female government organisation known as the Korper, who claim your body and soul. They are also a playful group of supercilious women who are defiant, individualistic and appear to adhere to the rules. There is an uncanny similarity to The Handmaiden’s Tale (Margaret Atwood), with inklings of 1984 (George Orwell).

We are first introduced to three Korper chorus women bearing similarity to Shakespeare’s three witches from Macbeth; they tell us “complacency is danger” and “discomfort is our friend”.  There is unrest and seething discontent rearing against body image by Korper Regulation cohort - Schwester Fedenka (Freya Pragt). She works in secret to make her body angular and muscular, opposing the systemic rules of angular body round and soft. Korper Conversion cohort - Assistant Mara (Emily Carr) is the quintessential peacekeeper, who is destined to pave the way for a new Korper world.

The language is rhetorical, repetitive, discordant and conspiratorial. There are familiar tropes from Shakespeare’s plays and Brechtian anti-narrative devices including farcical moments when audiences are required to stand when Korder administration are conducting official duties.

Mara Korper is an ambitious and long production, but Kirchert is fiercely innovative and passionate about her ideas and what she has to offer as a writer/director.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Stu Brown