It’s not every day that men get down on their knees to eat dog biscuits out of a woman’s hand.
On the surface, such a scene, from the show Train Your Man, may look like a revolt against the bastard male gene that collectively turned women into hateful tyrants. But the poignant subtext reveals the plight of women who have lost their true selves by having only ever learnt to sacrifice their needs to please the men in their lives.
The lead character, Hettie (Shirley Kirchmann), is a blue-eyed, blonde-haired brute of a bitch who ”whips” her sidekick Michael (Garth Breytenbach), the quintessence of a ”trained” man, into shape. Hettie is also the archetypal voice of anger that many abused women repress.
With the boundless energy of motivational guru Tony Robbins, Hettie trains Michael to be her own Stepford husband, to prove that women can empower themselves. Of course, she goes completely overboard with a horsewhip, Barbara Woodhouse’s Train your Dog manual, biscuits and stamps that say ”trained” — but that’s the whole point.
I was seated alongside comedienne and cabaret artist Irit Noble. Prior to the show, we were handed questionnaires to fill out. The first question was: ”If you could train your man, what would you train him to do?”
Noble’s answer was ”fetch my shoes — from Nine West”, but that’s Irit. My answer: ”To open his heart.” But that one always seems a bit much to ask.
At the bottom in bold, like the thought for the day, was: ”Remember a dog must respect its owner from the day it joins the household.”
Well, I have rarely seen so many respectful, well-behaved and compliant men as those in the audience attending Hettie’s training ”seminar” — a male behaviour-modification and obedience school.
If a male-produced show called Train Your Woman came out as a backlash, I would boycott it. Gender abuse is far too sensitive a subject for women.
But these men enjoyed it. Because the point was not the derogation of bald men with moustaches in pinstriped shirts; it was not about subjecting men to public scrutiny by making them say ”suig my klit [suck my clit]” out loud. The point was: ”You respect me and I’ll respect you” — which, although written by Kirchmann, was Breytenbach’s line.
And that’s what it’s about. And it is up to us women. Even the men in the audience agreed.
Paul from Vredehoek, who got stamped, said: ”Men don’t have a problem laughing at themselves.” And he earned the right to make this point as one of the chosen few to kneel on stage with a dog biscuit dangling from his mouth. ”It is up to the woman to change the man’s patterns because that’s how men are conditioned. The woman must break the pattern.”
I love that. They get to break our virginity and we get to break their patterns. Talk about women getting the bum deal. Then he added: ”It’s all about boxes — in a box we feel comfortable.”
I think he was speaking metaphorically, although I was hesitant to ask about what.
Einar, another ”trained” man, implied that using the analogy of the master and his dog to compare with a heterosexual relationship was artistically apt. ”I’m from Norway so we have been confronted with these attacks on manhood far longer than you have been,” said Einar. Ouch.
”It all starts with how we are treated as children by our mothers, and, by the time we marry, it’s too late for us to change.”
Well, that slams the door shut on hope for mankind, especially coming from a Norwegian. With that attitude, Kirchmann may as well pull the show, and instead lead our sisterhood into the desert to live in quarantine tents and wait to die.
But the presence and participation of so many men proves that men are willing to take a good look at themselves and challenge their machismo — in front of women, which I, for one, think is brave.
The owner of the theatre was amazed at how ”obedient” the men on stage were night after night. ”Especially that guy in the pink shirt who got delivered in the fanciest limousine that has ever passed by here.”
Train Your Man is on at the Obz Café Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town, until February 9, Tel: (021) 448 5555. It moves to the Kalk Bay Theatre from March 29 to April 8