Dame Grendela (Alexandra Boroff) councils her squire Aquiline (Gilly Guire) on how best to romance a shamed gentleman, whilst Pinne (Katy Jenkins) and ‘Dame Joanne’ (Adrian A. Garcia Jr.) look on.
Aquiline, who at this point in her life has only had sex with “tavern haunches” (serving boys), now bends her eye toward the fair Cordelius. Though of low reputation, he is still a gentleman, so Quill is unsure how to go about gaining his favor. Grendela, as she so often does, has the more pragmatic answer: if sex is what you want, then get it and don’t worry about what people think of him or you.
In Amosa (the setting of The Wayward Women), the sexual stereotypes and prejudices that are endured by women in most countries are instead foisted upon men, and vice-versa. So while Quill is concerned about getting a reputation herself, it is more the reputation of a highborn and responsible young adult wasting her time on nonsense, rather than the reputation of “promiscuity” that is so typically and hypocritically thrown on women in America (and many, many other countries). Cordelius, by contrast, has had premarital sex with one woman (that they know of) and is now considered “damaged goods,” a label he certainly never expected to receive.
Grendela’s frequent advice to do what you feel, when you feel it, often comes across as sensible and pragmatic. In practice, though, it always results in selfish bullying: she demeans, manipulates, and diminishes Anu and Pinne, she commands her friends do as she does or else, and plans to “take” Cordelius without a thought given to his own consent. Indeed, the conflict between the Dames Anu and Grendela is very much that age-old fight between absolute freedom and absolute control: neither actually works, and we are forced (like the squires) to try and find a happy compromise between the two. Of course, the exact level that makes a happy compromise seems to change hourly, if not minutely.
Ah, life.
COSTUMES by Delena Bradley
LIGHTING by Benjamin Dionysus
PHOTO by INDie Grant Productions, LLC