I maintain that it is a powerful piece, albeit, perhaps more powerful for females than males. More specifically, for mothers? For former girls?
It certainly did not feel like a lecture (unaffected by the pointing fingers. I was more affected by the girl pulling herself together, pulling her shirt down, putting her hair behind her ear, and smiling creepily. As a mother of a 9-year-old girl, that kind of “shellack” scares me).

A lot of the material — the images, music, the symbols (even though a character says “I hate symbols” the show is chock full of them, medieval and not), the technology, the style — are familiar, cliches. We can put labels on them like “so 1980’s” or “feminist” or “racial.” But when I do that it can separate me, remove me, even elevate me, make me feel superior to the work. I guess I prefer to surrender. It’s like paying a masseuse to be hard on you, cause pain even. Not that I like pain but I am there to get my muscles worked on.

Yes, I see the things you see Charles and Michael: what that you call “ridiculous” a person in the lobby called “violent, disturbing.” Take the laser to the head, for example: You thought of Star Trek, Michael, which is funny and certainly it’s there, whereas I immediately thought of the movie “Frances” in which Jessica Lange, as the outspoken actress Frances Harper, undergoes a lobotomy to make her more docile, less feisty and troublesome (how often have I mused about getting me one of them lobotomies? It would make life so much easier…..).

I still don’t get why the drum beating is ridiculous, but maybe it’s because I have my own associations for that. I think this is a detail I am referring to when I say it feels disloyal to pick it apart and judge the pieces rather than let the whole work together. HAving the pink goo drip throughout, for example. Did anyone wish it would stop? I wish I could see that every day.

Charles says: “The less I could identify an intention or a meaning behind them (the images) the more evocative and complex they were. When I had no rational explanation for something, the image began to play around in my head like a living thing. I had no control over it, and that was exciting.”
RIght on.
I think, then, there is little value in exposing oneself to hype, previews, research. It brings up the question again for me: Why do we go to the theater, any theater? Why ever be armed to be disappointed? Don’t we want to like it, don’t we want to be changed, to grow, to learn, etc.?
With movies, I think most of us enter with a pretty clear idea of what we’ll see and maybe even an expectation of how we will feel about it, how we will exit the building. In a very broad sense, it might go like this: we see horror movies to be thrilled and scared; we see comedies to make us laugh; we see romantic thrillers to move us; we see porn (well, I don’t) to titillate us. We pay a relatively small price and we get pretty much something we know we will get. With theater, and maybe especially the Walker, we have broader expectations.

With Hey Girl, I was reminded that as a viewer I can accept a lot. I am generous with my trust. I take in the cliche symbols, can surf many streams, can be dumb, intellectual, sensitive, annoyed, inspired, bored. The bad stuff has value, too, and I am coming around to this form of communication and processing. I do appreciate the discourse, the dialogue, the differences. I hope that comes across.

And that is not a girl thing or an artist thing or an intellectual thing. It’s a true, valid thing from an olive-skinned white woman who will never be the same.

Also, as a mature, successful, proven director, Romeo Castellucci is almost ineligible for Out There– that is a forum for less proven entities than he. I think following Out There with Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and Castellucci has been brilliant, fortuitous scheduling.