RAGE WITHIN/WITHOUT
“It’s a good story,” she insists. “It’s about women and anger. You’re going to like it.”
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This striking opening creates a performance persona full of compelling contradictions. She is strong and defiant, her gaze locked on us unerringly. Yet she uses cheap theatrical lighting to make herself look more imposing. She is confident of her material, speaking deliberately and directly, clearly in control of the situation. Yet she must harbor some enormous insecurity, for, like a playground bully, she threatens us: we are going to like this piece. If we don’t like the piece, she might lock us all in this tiny basement room and coolly strangle us one at a time–or she might break into childish, hysterical sobs.
Intelligently, Randels spends most of the piece exploring the middle ground, where most women arguably dwell. “When I was 12 years old, it was always my fault,” she tells us. No matter how many times her brother beat her up, her mother, eternally lying in bed, reading Harlequin romances and eating Andes mints, would casually pass off his violence as part of “being a boy.” Later Randels tells us of her dream of telling off a lover who dumped her. But no matter how acutely aware she is of the injustice done to her, she’s very inarticulate about it–all she can do is call him an “asshole.” She ends up saying in the dream, “I always forgave you, and I always will, motherfucker.”
Rage Within/Without is the kind of piece that in less skilled hands would degenerate into an abrasive harangue. But by creating a persona so emotionally unpredictable, unsure of whether she will explode into fury or collapse into sobs, Randels acknowledges the highly charged and psychologically complex nature of her material. No simple answers are given. And like her performance persona, we are also allowed to be unsure of our feelings. Randels does not assign guilt to any one party–to men, society, or whatever–for as she shows in the piece, guilt is an emotion that continually causes women to swallow their anger and become “good women.” Rather, Randels creates a space where it’s safe for us to examine our own stake in this situation, whatever that stake may be, and to allow our emotions to come to the surface.
