scripteddybareitall

Saturdays in the studenty district of Berlin where I am living have been infested with a gobbling string of raucous hens’ parties. You’ll see a dozen young or not so young women all wearing matching headpieces – bunny ears, airline-hostess hats, fascinators, halos on headbands – and maybe pink t-shirts with a slogan, or beauty queen sashes… today I saw nine girls towing a children’s wagon which had several bottles and all their handbags stashed in it, the head girl (the bride-to-be) had on a prison uniform and her satin sash read, “Lifer.” You’ll hear them before you see them, most probably. Last week I saw fourteen candy-pink bunnies coalesce in front of two long-legged fellows who had taken up life on the couch, someone else having left a corduroy couch in a garden bed by the cobbled street; they made some sort of suggestion to the boys who responded with some sort of willingness, bringing a ragged cheer, a whooping, from the hen party, that had an unmistakeably dutiful quality.

What I dislike about these dos is they seek to rope in passersby. It reminds me of why I don’t like street theatre – at least not the kind that leaps, rehearsed and scripted, onto a tram and then claims the other passengers, immersed in their own train of thought, their lives, their worries, their books, have no sense of humour/are ‘inhibited’ if they refuse to be bullied into taking part. This seems to me to give what might otherwise be actual fun an aggressive quality. There’s always one girl lagging behind, her arms folded, her handbag protecting her heart. Why must a woman be willing to consume penis-shaped chocolates to marry the one she loves? Why must she dress like a lap dancer in order to prove she’s a good sport? In a small northern town over Christmas we saw a man sweeping the town hall steps. His friends called us over and dispensed beers from the open hatchback of a small scarlet car. “He’s thirty,” they explained. “This is his birthday. He has to sweep the steps until nightfall, or until a virgin comes past and kisses him.” Eventually his girlfriend, her expression an unutterably painful combination of the wry and the humiliated, scampered up the steps and kissed his cheek. He put down the broom. A cheer went up. Somehow celebration seems to me – Christmas notwithstanding – far less convincing when it is so scripted.