Sweetie You Ain’t Guilty

by Gony Paz

The work is a reflection on the personal experience of sexual assault and its consequences and strives not to reconstruct or perpetuate the assault, but rather enable a more subversive observation of the subject, creating space for the performer and the audience in which transformation can take place.

The audience serve as a voice-over for Gony while she acts on stage, reading from cards handed to them. The same mechanism will repeat itself during the show again and again. Each time someone else from the audience will read. Each time someone else will be Gony and Gony will become someone else.

The play is a ceremony - a test of courage in which all the means, even the fictitious ones, are kosher. From mermaids to Kurt Cobain and Uma Thurman - all the superpowers are recruited to a duel with the assailant and to settle once and for all (or maybe every time again and again?) the question of the victim.

The work gives room for virtuosity and magic but also reveals weaknesses, humanity and simplicity. It aims to take the performer out of the comfort zone, to be in an intimate and exposed place on the stage, while allowing the audience a similar experience.