Endless Medication

The critically acclaimed theatre performance Endless Medication by Buelens Paulina had its breakthrough after the festival KunstenFESTIVALdesArts in 2003 and eventually it has toured large shares of Europe. As a performance Endless Medication is a combination of burlesque religion satire and entertaining mocking of the pregnancy hysteria of the rich Western World. It can also be read as criticism against a society in which women are considered failures if they can’t or won’t have children.

Endless Medication tells the story of Rosa, a girl who cannot weep. She is made pregnant by the JesusChristMachine - possibly a reference to Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine - and is soon to give birth - through her intestines - to God's grandson. God appears in the form of a talking bulb and the pregnancy takes on the form of a watermelon growing under Rosa's skirt. Because the child is developing in Rosa's intestines it encumbers her metabolism: the watermelon must be cut / aborted. With God's help Rosa finally gives birth (from her leg) to a little boy who never cries. The story ends with Rosa's incarceration in a madhouse, an infanticide, and a trial in which Rosa is condemned to endless medication.

The performance is realised in the basic inventive style of fairground theatre. Marijs Boulogne treats the tricks of theatre in a childlike, lucid, but also perverse manner. A scatological potency is hidden behind the apparent innocence of these two energetic, jolly, carefree girls. As a result of its subject - the conception and birth of the grandson of God, as well as the unforced, self-evident way in which they handle obscenity and violence, engenders a form of religiously-tinted pornography.

The name of the girl - Rosa - derives from the Saint Rosa of Lima (1586-1617), and similarly to the experiences of many female mystics from that period, religious ecstasy all too easily turns into highly sexually charged delirium. The sacral and blasphemous go hand in hand. As with Boulogne's later projects, Endless Medication is dominated by a radical, female corporality with particular focus on the interior of the body. Rather than the breasts or the belly she is interested in the private parts and the intestines, faeces, menstruation and bodily fluids in general. The disorder that Rosa's pregnancy causes her body finds its antithesis in the chaos, filth and dirt left behind on the stage at the end of the performance. At the same time this work can also be seen within the context of Flemish historical sensitivity for the grotesque, the macabre and the vital. 

The production is written and directed by Marijs Boulogne and Manah Depauw. After the dissolution of the company Buelens Paulina, the production was unavailable for the audience for years. However, Marijs Boulougne was alloted the rights to perform it in English, and since then she has performed Endless Medication with Sara De Bosschere.

Sara de Bosschere manages the company De Roovers on a daily basis, and she is one of the most used actresses in Flemish theatre.

-Text: Marianne Van Kerkhoven, dramaturgy Kaaitheater Brussels

Source: BIT Teatergarasjen, autumn program 2008. 02.07.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no -arkiv

"The lavish, grotesque performance hides a theatrical but yet discomforting sharp of some elements of the female role. Not yet 50 years have passed since a young girl at home once ran away to the woods to be gone for months because she was terrified due to her first menstruation. It should also suffice to mention that eating disorders, at times life threatening anorexia, are increasing among young women. So the horror story of Buelens Paulina about young women, perverted Eros and mental illness unfortunately still is of current interest. So much of current interest many young girls should be allowed to see Endless Medication during school hours. Besides, the performance lasts exactly for a school class"

Larsen, IdaLou (31.01.09). Review titled To kvinner (literally: Two women). IdaLou Larsen, idalou.no, 08.11.2010, http://www.idalou.no/pub/idalou/kritikker/?aid=502