The Second Woman – Holland Festival

Anna Breckon & Nat Randall, Georgina Verbaan

In The Second Woman actress Georgina Verbaan repeats a single scene 100 times over a 24-hour period. Starring opposite her are 100 different men, queer and non-binary people drawn from the local community. In each scene the two performers meet on the stage for the first time. 

The scene, which lasts about 10 minutes, involves a woman and her partner in a relationship that has lost its creativity, romance and vitality. A man enters. We know as little about him as the performer does. The intense and intimate exchange between her and the participant culminates in a final choice: ‘I love you’ or ‘I never loved you.’

The set design and live images draw inspiration from American independent cinema of the 1970s and a history of women’s melodrama, as a genre portraying women in a stereotypical way. On-stage sparks fly, lines between fiction and reality blur, and the sense of elation and anxiety is palpable.

The Second Woman will took place simultaneously as a performance on stage and a live screening at Pathé Tuschinski.