Rendering №5

The article An Everywoman? In So Many Ways, No by Claudia La Rocco was published on the site http://www.nytimes.com/ on the 10th of March. 

At the beginning it’s important to say that The Nobel Prize-winning Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek describes how her male colleagues are allowed “to have this subjectivity, this precise, absolutely unmistakable gaze.”  This mode is “a way of talking,” that “a woman, who is not considered a subject, simply can’t have.” As directed by Tea Alagic and portrayed by Tina Benko, this Jackie teeters restlessly between subject and object. It is a grim portrait.The author noted that Jackie occupies a bleak limbo, given evocative theatrical life. urrounded by filth she remains spotless in a trench coat, full-skirted dress and heels, designed by Susan Hilferty. Ms. Jelinek also indicates that Jackie should be dragging her dead children, husbands and Bobby Kennedy behind her, their weight such that the actress might on any night have to end her monologue when overcome by effort. But Jackie, of course, was only a passenger in that car. Despite her grand stage she occupies a mean, airless little world. It is an arduous task for an actress. Ms. Benko must contend with the playwright’s myth making and political agenda on top of the Kennedy mythology: her character is doubly objectified. 

As for the author’s opinion I can say that she is meant to sink down under the weight of this delivery. Perhaps this is the only way of talking that remains for this object woman. Look at this brittle ghost, Ms. Jelinek’s relentless words insist, consider why she cannot rest.