Theatre Gigante 'Three Other Sisters' poster
In an old Montenegrin folktale, a faithless sailor promises each of three sisters that he would marry her when he returned from the sea. Years passed. When the first sister died, the two remaining siblings bricked over her bedroom window. When the second sister died, the surviving sister bricked over her window. And when the last sister died, the house was empty, and her bedroom window remained open.
It sounds rather like the Brothers Grimm if the folklore collectors had ventured from their beloved enchanted forests and found the sea. And yet, could the tale be based on actual events? As Theatre Gigante’s Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson point out, an old stone house, sitting on the Adriatic shore with two bricked-up bedroom windows, is said to have been the sisters’ home. It’s open for tourists. Gigante’s codirectors have photos of it on their phones.
Regardless of the story’s literal veracity, the tale is an archetype of foolish passion that resolves in tragedy and inspired a production by Kralj and Anderson. Their Three Other Sisters debuted in Milwaukee in 2010, went on tour in Slovenia two years later and returns this month to the local stage.
According to Anderson, the sailor’s false promise is the MacGuffin that “sets the story in motion but we’re hoping to get somewhere else. It’s not about love. It’s about yearning, dreaming—knowing what to dream and what isn’t worth pining away for. The bottom line is not about three women in love but about your existence and what to do with your life.”
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Three Other Sisters is told in sparse dialogue, minimalistic monologues, expressionistic movement and in songs, most of them written by Slovenian rock star Vlado Kreslin (Kralj compares him to Bruce Springsteen). The elements converge and retract in poetic, cyclical motion. Staging is simple. The three sisters (Kralj, Simone Ferro and Tori Watson), wearing dresses of austere simplicity, sit before white window frames against a sea-blue backdrop. The sailor-troubadour, singing the Kreslin songs, woos them, often wordlessly.
The old folk tale could be thoughtlessly interpreted as a paean to feminine devotion, but its feminist implications are drawn out in Theatre Gigante’s retelling. “There’s a fine line to be drawn,” Kralj says of the story. “In their monologues, the sisters are love-sick puppies. They are bleeding at the heart. Despite the fact that the dilemma these sisters face is an unrequited love, their lovesickness is just a metaphor for any choices, dreams, and aspirations we may have in life.”
Theatre Gigante performs Three Other Sisters Sept. 29-Oct. 1 at Kenilworth 508 Theater, 1925 E. Kenilworth Place. For more information, visit http://www.theatregigante.org/.
