Rites

The play is a black farce which takes place in a ladies lavatory. Its occupants speak in the cliches which in dreams often mask our meanings from ourselves. Rites is Agave’s story. Agave in Euripides is punished mercilessly for her denial. Ada (in Rites) has also denied life by translating sex and love into money and revenge. However, she escapes. In a world of stereotypes and attitudes (men do this, women are like that; feminine reaction, masculine response) She is society’s product if not victim. All reduction of people to objects, all imposition of labels and patterns to which they must conform, all segregation can lead only to destruction. In the very moment when the women have got their own back on men for their type-casting in an orgasm of violence they find they have destroyed themselves and in death there is certainly no difference.