Productions

Jean Genet’s The Maids is a feverish, poetic exploration of desire, power, and performance. Inspired by the real-life 1933 Papin sisters murder case in France, the play follows two maids who ritualistically reenact the murder of their employer, shifting roles between servant, mistress, and executioner in a volatile game of identity and control.

Genet, a French novelist, playwright, and poet, was a gay sex worker whose life and art were shaped by the experience of living outside respectability. After multiple imprisonments for theft and vagrancy, he began to write from within the margins, transforming shame into spectacle and tragic beauty. His work: unflinching, erotic, and defiant, celebrates those deemed criminal or deviant by society, exposing hypocrisy and the performative nature of power itself.

In The Maids, gender and class roles blur, masks slip, and fantasy collides with repression. Genet’s world is one where artifice becomes truth and performance becomes survival, making The Maids as unsettling and vital today as when it first premiered.

Kaleidoscope Theatre Company will present The Maids for two weekends in December: December 11–14 and 18–21, continuing our mission to create bold, queer-centered theatre that challenges and connects. 

Seating is limited. Get your tickets today.