unmanly

Unmanly—what does it mean? Girlish, feminine, weak, weepy, soft, cowardly, submissive, frail, overemotional? Or maybe something else? Maybe just liberated from posturing and anxieties, free of the obligatory rivalry and muscle-flexing, free of the culturally-imposed behavior that might be admired on the screen, but in real life…?

An unmanly man decides for himself. An unmanly man does not take advantage of the privileges given to him “from above.” An unmanly man is one who says what he feels, who does not have to win, because his life is not a competition, a match, or a race. It is hard to understand the play’s protagonists—four men at a turning point and under pressure—but we must admit they are really trying, and the play’s creators are attempting to persuade them that “unmanly” is less an insult than a compliment.

The protagonists’ twisted stories come face-to-face with the cultural collapse of the system; “unmanly” is a utopian speculation on its state of things. These are scenes where men gain soft skills generally ascribed to women in a humorous and oneiric fashion. The lost, complex-ridden protagonists try to find themselves in the new reality, hovering somewhere between dream and waking. “Unmanly” can also help us get over our anxieties, fears, and worries about the crumbling patriarchy.

Cast