Missions of Beauty

Eight female characters, all played by actress Lisa-Katrina Mayer, grapple with the role assignments of our society that are still all too deeply ingrained in girls and women today. 

Judit is the Old Testament symbol of the beautiful and pure young woman who, in the context of male-dominated historiography, is a widow who lacks any future prospects and status and who tries to redeem her people, who are threatened by siege and barbarism, by sneaking into the camp of the feared general Holofernes, seducing him and beheading him in a drunken sleep. She returns home triumphantly with his head as a trophy and is celebrated by her people as a redeemer and saint from then on. Judit in Sibylle Berg's "Missions of Beauty" is 12 and lives in Brussels, she is 18 and lives in Berlin, 23 in Kinshasa, 30 in Kiev, 38 in São Paulo, 40 in Naples, 54 in Johannesburg and 75 in Betulia.

We meet female characters who are characterized by their power and strength, their humor and their ability to love unconditionally. At the same time, however, they are deeply unsettled by a supposedly flawed appearance, unable to separate their self-worth from visual flaws or aging beauty. The religious fanaticism that drives the protagonist in the Bible and inevitably brings to mind contemporary terrorist actors is expressed in Berg's characters as fanaticism in the fight against one's own self, as a longing to break away from one's own ego.

Supported by the City of Zurich Culture, Migros Culture Percentage, Zürcher Kantonalbank

729A8678-min

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729A8743-min

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729A9526-min