‘Miss Julie’ gets radical makeover — twice
New productions address the playwright’s views on women
What is to be done about “Miss Julie”? The 1888 play by August Strindberg has become an enduring classic for its ostensibly naturalistic, tense interplay of desire and class divisions. It’s also a deeply problematic text expressing disturbing views on women. “Strindberg wrote a preface to the play which is openly misogynist, which is basically spelling out, ‘My play is realism. And in this reality that I’m describing for you, which is the truth, if women try to be like men, they are half women, half men and they’re doomed to kill themselves,’ ” says Chris Steele, who adapted “The Julie Cycle,” Poltergeist Theatre Project’s debut outing now playing in San Francisco. “In Strindberg’s world, she’s going against a lot of societal conventions,” says Megan Cohen, whose adaptation called “Free for All” for Cutting Ball Theater premieres in September. “But as with so many plays of that time, and even up to now, she’s this strong, powerful woman who ultimately has to die. And if that message were true, we would still be where Miss Julie was. Change is made by the people who survive, who are difficult but keep going and force the world to move with them instead of being crushed by what it offers.” The back-to-back re-envisionings of Strindberg’s play are sheer coincidence, although certainly there’s something in the air. “When you have these mass shootings perpetrated by people that identify as ‘incels,’ when you have this constant discussion surrounding women’s bodies and whether or not they’re their own, when you have a person in the White House who has explicitly misogynist language, the play is sort of set in a new light,” Steele says. Poltergeist’s “The Julie Cycle” is a queer feminist deconstruction of the play in which three performers cycle through the story again and again, switching roles, in hopes of escaping it. Cohen describes “Free for All” as a whimsical comedy that updates the story to San Francisco in the notso-distant future. Poltergeist co-artistic directors Britt Lauer and Steele met a few years ago as frequent performers with San Francisco’s We Players. “We just discovered we have a similar aesthetic and interest in exploring similar issues,” Lauer recalls. They formed Poltergeist in January to avail themselves of PlayGround’s Innovator Incubator program to help nurture new theater companies. “The Julie Cycle” moves around from Potrero Stage as part of PlayGround’s Innovators Showcase to the Harvey Milk Center for the Arts and PianoFight. Lauer and Steele co-star with Jackie Wolfe, directed by Giselle Boustani-Fontenele. New Cutting Ball artistic director Ariel Craft approached Cohen about adapting “Miss Julie.” Cutting Ball has a history of exploring Strindberg’s works, including his five “Chamber Plays in Rep” in 2012 and “A Dreamplay” in 2016. In “Free for All,” Cohen and Craft are working from a new translation by founding artistic director Rob Melrose. Craft directs a two-person cast of Stacy Ross and Phil Wong. As vexing as the original can be, Cohen sees why it remains popular. “My favorite thing about Strindberg is that he is able to have characters who at any given moment want two completely opposite things,” she says. “They are ripped in half by their desires. And that’s incredibly dramatically compelling. I think when you have work that has craftsmanship, that solid dramaturgy that’s watertight on a moment to moment basis, of course you’re going to want to do it. I also think to say that we do it in spite of its misogyny or its patriarchal views would be very generous to us as a people. I wouldn’t be wrestling with it if I thought we were past it.”