Pure Hell

Pure Hell was a re-working of the “Women and Power” trilogy of Pure Virtue, Pure Sin, and Pure Nonsense, each of which focused on a female archetype: Queen Elizabeth I (played by Mars), representing political power; Mae West, representing the power of femininity, sexuality, and seduction; and Alice, of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, representing the power of creativity and the imagination. In this 90-minute spectacle, Elizabeth sought truth, Mae West looked for her rightful place in history, and Alice searched for her missing penis (or phallus). Through these fictional and real personalities, Tanya Mars addressed a range of feminist issues, including the construction of femininity and subjecthood, the processes of socialization, the formation of feminine role models, and the psychological, sexual and social implications of the relation of women to power.