Pussy Sludge

Book excerpt: Pussy Sludge is a play about a woman with a broken pussy. There's a woman menstruating crude oil. She lives in a swamp. She's in love with Courtney, but her mother prefers RJ. No one knows who knows what's best. Gracie Gardner's award-winning play sketches a dystopian setting with an eponymous main character who, in a number of absurd encounters, resists stereotypical gender constructions and socially predetermined life models. Far more than just a feisty criticism of patriarchal systems, the play turns power structures upside down and offers a surreal and comic parable of sexual self-determination that challenges conservative gender constructs and our patriarchal status quo with vigor and irony. Pussy Sludge is a tender exploration of questioning authority, suspending shame through intimacy, and very bad advice.