Wild Rice :: 'Psychobitch'

I was sitting on the fence about watching 'Psychobitch' staged by Wild Rice. When J nudged me about about, I sat on it some more, then stopped procrastinating and booked us tickets for the show. J and I went with no expectations for the show, and didn't even bother reading reviews. At the end of the night, we weren't disappointed. 

Written by Amanda Chong, the play was developed under the mentorship of Haresh Sharma as part of The Necessary Stage’s developmental playwriting programme, Playwrights Cove 2022. This production by Wild Rice is directed by Pam Oei. It's a one-woman show with Sindhura Kalidas as overachieving journalist Anya Samuel.

Psychobitch is a play written straight from my uterus – saturated with all the pain, rage and radical joy of being a woman.

I knew this play had to be called Psychobitch, the unhinged twin inside every Good Girl. Anya Samuel is apologetically honest (an unfortunate symptom of womanhood is apologising repeatedly). She invites you into her supercharged inner monologue, with all its chaos, vulnerabilities and secrets she has suppressed from even herself.

Anya Samuel’s story belongs to every one of us who has longed to be loved and struggled to feel worthy. I hope you find some of yourself in this Psychobitch, and that she gives you permission to laugh, cry, and hope.

~ Amanda Chong, in her Playwright's Message in the program

The show could have been shorter than its 90-minute run. If it clocked at 70 minutes, that would have been great. Towards the end, it got a bit tedious. It isn't just the audience getting tired of it, along with the actor metaphorically getting tired of her toxic relationship. It was actually a tad long. Otherwise, it's a brilliant performance extracted from a great script and tightened by the director and the production crew for the stage.

Ahhhhh, yes. Hysteria has always been associated with women, moon blood, and the sorts. That women are deemed 'lesser' than men, et cetera. Grrrrr. In the program, Wild Rice editorial consultant Shawne Wang expounded on the universal perception that 'women are more emotional than men', and how Anya's fiancé Galven clearly thinks so. The irony is that when Galven becomes emotional, he also turns physically violent.

One such stereotype that persists to this day is the belief that women are more “emotional” than men – that they are overly sensitive, prone to mood swings, and driven primarily by their feelings and/ or hormones, rather than rationality and logic (which are typically seen as masculine attributes). It is this stereotype that underpins the ultimatum Galven issues to Anya in Psychobitch –

“Galven wants me to explain what exactly happened in the ‘Four Emotional Episodes’. He needs me to convince him that these Four Episodes do not lead to the inexorable conclusion that Anya is pathologically Emotional. Whatever the hell that means.” – Anya Samuel, Psychobitch

I also smelt methi (?) roasting in a pan. Hahaha. If that's a theatrical flourish, it was fun! The actor wanted to go home and eat and be loved for who she is and what is, without being called over-emotional. I also wanted to go home and eat some ponni rice and dhal (the freezer's got packs and tubs of these). LOL

Anya Samuel is all of us, isn't it? We're expected to be sterling in our professional lives, but in our personal lives, some of our mothers and grandmothers expect us to also have it all as a woman who can cook and clean and care for a family in the traditional expected role of a woman who has birthed children. This is such a tedious image. 

Anyway, it was a good evening to have a laugh. The many RGS girls (numbering 86, I was told) in the audience were soooo vocal and supportive of the actor, the scenes, the words and the circumstances and the emotions that. Their enthusiasm was so endearing; they kinda made this particular show's vibes rather fun. 

This reflects the no-win situations in which women frequently find themselves in both their personal and professional lives. They are discredited or undermined if they express the true breadth and depth of their emotions, and regarded with suspicion if they are perceived to be defying the stereotype.