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Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fefu and Her Friends, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
As an experimental play that prioritizes the audience’s experience and perception over the actual plot or narrative arc, Fefu and Her Friends uses abstract representation to capture a certain feeling of reality. Of course, the play doesn’t fall under the umbrella of Realism, but its experimental elements do invite audience members to immerse themselves in the lived experience of the characters. This, in turn, places an emphasis on what it feels like to move through life, which often involves trying to interpret and connect seemingly disparate events and ideas. The basic structure and staging of the play illustrate this well, as Act II is divided into four separate scenes that all play out simultaneously in different rooms. During the performance, the audience splits into four sections, with each section going to a different room, watching a scene, and then rotating to another room before eventually reconvening for the play’s final act. This approach takes the emphasis off of linear storytelling, instead presenting the play as a subjective experience for the audience members to piece together—after all, people will experience the play differently based on the order in which they view the four scenes in Act II, thus turning the entire show into an exploration of subjectivity and interpretation.
Interestingly, the scenes in Act II don’t have any throughline or plot-related relevance to one another. Instead, they simply showcase the thoughts and conversations that the women in each room have, which occasionally have some sort of thematic overlap. Fefu and Julia, for instance, both talk about some form of suffering, even though they do so in different scenes. Furthermore, all four scenes touch on sex or sexuality in some way or another. And yet, the conversations and concerns that the characters have don’t create any sort of cohesive narrative. Rather, the play simply exists as an abstract collage representing a day in the life of eight women spending time together in the first half of the 21st century. In this way, Fefu and Her Friends is, at its core, a play about lived experience and how people make sense of life. Furthermore, the abstract, highly interpretive nature of the play itself invites readers to consider the fact that life is often disordered, disjointed, and difficult to understand. In turn, the process of trying to understand the play mirrors what it’s like to simply move through life.
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Abstract Representation and Interpretation ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Abstract Representation and Interpretation appears in each part of Fefu and Her Friends. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Abstract Representation and Interpretation Quotes in Fefu and Her Friends
Below you will find the important quotes in Fefu and Her Friends related to the theme of Abstract Representation and Interpretation.
Part 1
Quotes
FEFU: There you have it! You too are fascinated with revulsion.
CHRISTINA: Hmm.
FEFU: You see, that which is exposed to the exterior . . . is smooth and dry and clean. That which is not . . . underneath, is slimy and filled with fungus and crawling with worms. It is another life that is parallel to the one we manifest. It’s there. The way worms are underneath the stone. If you don’t recognize it . . . (Whispering.) it eats you. That is my opinion.
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CINDY: He shot. Julia and the deer fell. The deer was dead . . . dying. Julia was unconscious. She had convulsions . . . like the deer. He died and she didn’t. I screamed for help and the hunter came and examined Julia. He said, “She is not hurt.” Julia’s forehead was bleeding. He said, “It is a surface wound. I didn’t hurt her.” I know it wasn’t he who hurt her. It was someone else. He went for help and Julia started talking. She was delirious.—Apparently there was a spinal nerve injury. She hit her head and she suffered a concussion. She blanks out and that is caused by the blow on the head. It’s a scar in the brain. It’s called the petit mal.
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([…] Julia goes to the gun, takes it and smells the mouth of the barrel. She looks at Cindy.)
CINDY: It’s a blank.
(Julia takes the remaining slug out of the gun. She lets it fall on the floor.)
JULIA: She’s hurting herself. (Julia looks blank and is motionless. Cindy picks up the slug. She notices Julia’s condition.)
CINDY: Julia. (To Christina.) She’s absent.
CHRISTINA: What do we do?
CINDY: Nothing, she’ll be all right in a moment. (She takes the gun from Julia. Julia comes to.)
JULIA: It’s a blank . . .
CINDY: It is.
JULIA: She’s hurting herself. (Julia lets out a strange whimper. She goes to the coffee table, takes a piece of chocolate, puts it in her mouth and goes toward her room. After she crosses the threshold, she stops.) I must lie down.
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Part 2: On the Lawn
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FEFU: […] I am in constant pain. I don’t want to give in to it. If I do I am afraid I will never recover. . . . It’s not physical, and it’s not sorrow. It’s very strange Emma, I can’t describe it, and it’s very frightening. . . . It is as if normally there is a lubricant . . . not in the body . . . a spiritual lubricant . . . it’s hard to describe . . . and without it, life is a nightmare, and everything is distorted.
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Part 2: In the Bedroom
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JULIA: […] Why do you have to kill Fefu, for she’s only a joker? (With a gravelly voice.) “Not kill, cure. Cure her.” Will it hurt?
(She whimpers.)
Oh, dear, dear, my dear, they want your light. Your light my dear. Your precious light. Oh dear, my dear.
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The human being is of the masculine gender. The human being is a boy as a child and a grown up he is a man. Everything on earth is for the human being, which is man. To nourish him. […] Woman is not a human being. She is: 1—A mystery. 2—Another species. 3—As yet undefined. 4—Unpredictable; therefore wicked and gentle and evil and good which is evil.
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PAULA: I felt small in your presence . . . I haven’t done all that I could have. All I wanted to do. Our lives have gone in such different directions I cannot help but review what those years have been for me. I gave up, almost gave up. I have missed you in my life. . . . I became lazy. I lost the drive. You abandoned me and I kept going. But after a while I didn’t know how to. I didn’t know how to go on. I knew why when I was with you. To give you pleasure. So we could laugh together. So we could rejoice together. To bring beauty to the world. . . . Now we look at each other like strangers. We are guarded. I speak and you don’t understand my words. I remember every day.
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