* Us by Karen Malpede "You reach so far inside me. You reach so far inside. You touch me where I have not been touched before. What is it with us, what? Why is it like this with us? Why is that?" Us is the story of the sexual life of two sets of parents and of their children who, as adults, are drawn into a wildly passionate, yet tortured love affair. Confessional in its language, the play reveals the inner landscape of six people's desires. There is also a political dimension in the cultural conflicts within the play between American Italian-Catholic and Jew, French and Arab Algerian. Inescapable erotic attraction keeps the two sets of parents fused and creates off-spring who are sexual time bombs, formed by childhood experiences of incest and violence. Two actors perform all six characters, transforming themselves through movement, voice and mask into two pairs of ethnically diverse parents and their adult children who become lovers. "I thought that by making Us so personal, confessional, shocking in its revelations of what ought not/cannot be said, I would be telling a story many people understood. I thought that by showing how the sorrows of parents live on in their children, I might be helping to untie this knot. I wished that by sweeping us away with the brutality of language and then flying higher on the fabulous tongue of Eros, this play about truths so private we almost dare not to speak them would become an experience, a cleansing of sorts, a whirlwind that could leave calm in its place." (Karen Malpede, from the programme note) The play premiered in New York in 1987, directed by Judith Malina for The Living Theatre. It is published in Women on the Verge: Seven Avant Garde Plays (Applause, 1992). This was, surprisingly, its European premiere. The Lusty Juventus production of Us opened on 9 October 1999 at the Exeter Phoenix. performers: Ruth Way & Toby Leetham director: Roberta Mock choreographer: Ruth Way scenographer: Edwina Rigby sound design: Rube & peepee costume design & construction: George Watson mask design & construction: Russell Frampton assistant director: Rebecca Cannon publicity & production photography: Sarah Swainson publicity design: peepee publicity models: James & Jess This production was financially supported by Exeter Arts Council, The University of Plymouth, and Indelible Inc. press quote: "[T]he Phoenix contains a 200-seat theatre which is ideally suited to small-scale arts events, dance, theatre, and music. This play, a Lusty Juventus production of Karen Malpede's imaginative work, combines all those elements. It begins in avant-garde style, but is revealed as an example of physical theatre when it settles down… Actors Ruth Way and Toby Leetham are frequently locked in simulated sex and the discussion of this activity is coarse and detailed. Malpede's purpose is to examine the nature of violence and the psychology of the giver and receiver – that one encourages the other… [T]he expertise of Way and Leetham, flinging themselves about non-stop while remembering what must have been painstaking direction instructions from Roberta Mock, is admirable." (Allen Saddler, The Stage).