Téton Tardif
Created by Caroline Raynaud
Sudbury | 70 mins
“I want to be good.”
Téton Tardif is a fantastic show that asks us to consider how we teach our daughters to value themselves, and I felt it in my bones.
Caroline Raynaud shines in this solo French performance with English subtitles―as a character also named Caroline―a woman who has recently discovered she’s pregnant, and it’s a girl.
Like so many women, Caroline is afraid to have a girl. She calls herself a bad example, and even asks, “how does one become a woman?” She breaks down her experiences in vignettes of girlhood―life at age 10, at age 15 and life as a young adult.
Throughout is woven a girl’s innocent desires: breasts, because a celebrity in an interview said they “saved her life;” a kiss, because that’s what you do when you get older and need to hide your tiny breasts; true love…
Scene from Téton Tardif. Photo by Joel Ducharme.
The performance starts at the end and jumps back and forth through time, making the audience roar with laughter, then gasp in empathy.
Slowly, effortlessly, Raynaud leads the audience through the inevitable results of a girl who learns that her worth, her very existence, is defined by a man’s gaze.
We see seven-year-old Caroline line up her Barbies. Ken is James Bond. He orders the Barbies to strip, so they do. Then he picks one and forces her to kiss him, her “no, no, no” becoming “oh, oh, oh.”
Scene from Téton Tardif. Photo by Joel Ducharme.
We see ten-year-old Caroline gush over glossy celebrities in magazines, over the breasts she believes will make her like them. We see her first kiss, like a disgusting mouthful of cow tongue. We see teenaged Caroline rejoice when a man tells her “you’ll be good later,” once she is older, more developed, sexier.
She is used but calls it freedom. She is gaslit but calls it empowerment. She owns her choices, but behind her crumbling façade of womanhood is a terrified girl who says “yes” to ever more questionable demands for sex.
Then Caroline is offered a role in porn. “That means I’m good,” she says. Téton Tardif was wonderful. It felt very real and very raw.
Téton Tardif played at undercurrents from Feb. 13-15. This show has content warning for sexual content. Some viewers could find descriptions of coercive sex to be triggering. It is a workshop performance so will hopefully be back soon. For more information, visit the undercurrents website.
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