Content Warning: This article discusses sexual assault.
SNAKEFACE, a theatrical production written and performed by Aliyah Knight, tells the story of Maddie, a Medusa-esque figure, grappling with her experiences of sexual assault and the wounds that she can’t move on from. It is a violent act of reclamation, dealing with grief, trauma, vengeance, and the mess of rebuilding in the wake of total destruction.
Knight expertly grapples with the confronting themes at the core of SNAKEFACE, their acting tight and controlled, turning a 90-minute monologue into a vibrant and dangerous world. Over the course of the play, Knight slowly unfurls in front of the audience. She removes first her hairpiece, then her rings, her corset, her shirt, and her belt, undressing herself to reveal her scars to an enraptured crowd.
SNAKEFACE begins on a Tuesday night at ‘The Bush’, a fictional lesbian bar in Sydney, with the sound of bass-heavy music playing in the background (any similarity to Sydney lesbian bars living or dead is purely coincidental). Though this is normally a sound associated with excitement and freedom, it is woven into the audience’s awareness that this story is about sexual assault. The bass morphs into something ominous, a pulsing force that warns of danger. It reimagines the safety and the freedom everyone searches for in the club and puts it instead into a horror movie.
Praise is due to Knight, director Bernadette Fam, Fruit Box Theatre, and the entire team behind the project for handling a topic as sensitive as sexual assault with such care towards audience members. There were resources provided at the entrance point of the show, trigger warnings were clearly stated, and the theatre became a quiet space after the play was over to allow a safe environment to process the content. There was a level of care and delicacy that elevated this performance from beyond that of a mere external commentary.
The play is littered with visceral bloody imagery. When first recounting how Maddie met her then-girlfriend, she explains that she was so pretty she wanted to bite her. Later, when describing their best friend, Maddie says “They were the only person I truly wanted to eat.” However, as the play progresses this violent imagery turns from a display of love into an outlet for Maddie to describe the murders she commits. In her book Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson writes “I’ve tried to get you out of my head, but I can’t seem to get you out of my flesh… When I sit down to eat, it’s you I’m eating”.
Consumption as desire is one of the oldest and most pungent metaphors for love, the idea of feeling emotions so strongly that it consumes you, that it’s not enough just to kiss a person; the ultimate desire is to subsume them completely. Knight takes metaphors that become synonymous with an unrequited longing and subverts them, turns them into bloody acts of murder. Bound into care and desire, this carnal symbolism also holds narratives of power and unrestrained passion, of feral, beastly intent. Knight weaponises these emotions towards hatred and death, taking care and affection and making it something violent, a weapon to be used against those that have done you wrong.
Though SNAKEFACE emerged from the fictional myth of Medusa, it feels incredibly, heart-wrenchingly, sickeningly real. This is not a story of a mythical figure, but of a child, sexually assaulted by an older student (“you’re much more interesting than the year 12 girls”), then later in a club, then during a hookup. Only when, in the third act, Maddie begins to murder her attackers, does the play begin to feel fantastical. It steps out of the realm of realism we have inhabited for the past hour. In many ways, it is a damning indictment on the prevailing culture of normalised sexual assault within which we exist. Knight holds a mirror up to our society, highlighting that the injustice of the utter atrocities committed against Maddie belongs to the real world, whilst the ability to retaliate belongs in the fantastical one.
Knight drew heavily on poetry throughout her performance, projecting poems onto the wall behind her. They became an internal monologue, a silent commentary. Reflecting the anger she couldn’t say and the hurt she was unable to voice, they loom behind Maddie like a terrible spectre. Much of these poems are blacked out, single words and phrase, symbols of the damage caused through rape and abuse. It is not just that Maddie can’t vocalise her pain: she can’t remember it at all, her brain blocking out the trauma, leaving her with no ability to move on.
Perhaps the most intriguing part of the performance emerged from Knight’s use of a large clay block, jutting up from the floor of the stage. Knight used this clay to achieve an incredible emotive power that elevated her performance. First by pulling at it, corner by corner, anxiously picking at the fraying edges as they struggled to voice a story that was almost impossible to tell. Then, snapping, she carved away at the heart of the block, digging and rending, snapping its ribs and removing its heart. She was covering herself in a grey crust of filth. Later, trying to be clean, Knight dips their fingers into a too-small bowl of water, vigorously scrubbing at her arms, discomforting, squelching, the noise of wet skin on clay setting the entire audience on edge.
Knight knew how to make the viewer feel uncomfortable, sitting in these moments of discomfort, embracing them, making them her own. This wasn’t a play about comfort, a nice story to send you off to sleep. This was a story about anger, about carnage, about hatred and trauma and wanting to be anywhere as long as it’s not in your own body. It was confronting, and it was better for it. This wasn’t a story you watch and leave feeling clean on the other side.
As the house lights came on and everyone began to pick up their bags, empty glasses, and chip packets, a chuckle rippled through the crowd; a sign had been placed by the exit: “Please wipe your feet on the way out.” Unlike the mud caked into the carpet, SNAKEFACE isn’t something you’ll leave behind in a hurry.
SNAKEFACE is playing from April 8 to April 27 at Belvoir St Theatre.
