“Sexual Assault! Gay people!” A queer student says this in Katie Mathews feature documentary Roleplay, the story of a theatre group developing a play about campus sexual violence with the actual college students living through it day by day. While fighting for representation in the play, the student manages to also highlight in a very funny succinct way the didacticism the documentary hopes to avoid. Premiering now at the South X Southwest film festival, Roleplaysets out to not be one large teaching moment by letting the students themselves do most of the talking.
They’re a group of Tulane University students in New Orleans from different racial and sexual backgrounds. Some fit into the alcohol fueled frat life that permeates the campus, some don’t participate in it at all, some live in fear of it. A scene where black students colour in a campus map to show the few places they feel safe is contrasted with a white male student somewhat sheepishly admitting he feels safe everywhere.
The film does a good job of showing the pain caused by sexual violence, identifying with the victims, while also allowing for moments where the both the students and the audience watching can ask “Am I that person?”, what have I done to cause or what can I do to avoid causing this pain.
One white female student involved in the play is probably the most at ease with frat life. She sees the problems with it but also can’t deny that it’s fun to get dressed up and get wasted at a party. Other scenes show the pleasant side of campus life like hosting a college radio show. Which makes it all the more heartbreaking to see how uncomfortable every aspect of campus life is for some of the students. One such student recreates a scene from her time at Tulane where she felt abandoned by a friend in an unsafe situation. She performs it with the student who admitted she enjoys some parts of frat life. They do the scene at night in front of a campus bar. Glassy eyed youngsters approach them, interested in the camera.
It’s one of several scenes showing the omnipresence of alcohol here. One student attempting sobriety is suddenly pushing a cart through the wide aisles of a Costco, grabbing massive bottles of vodka off the shelves. After hearing her desire for sobriety, It’s heartbreaking and jarring to see her grab the bottles off the shelf.
The clean, well lit, vast aisles of Costco display some of the clearest boundaries in the movie, especially compared to the blurry drunk nights out. The subject matter mixed with the nature of workshopping a play offer a nice way to examine the exploration of boundaries. Drama exercises of movement and noise draw out the performance and comfort and autobiographical details necessary for the play. Intimacy coordinators and listening to the students’ revisions to the material allow for those boundaries to be respected. It’s an interesting push and pull for a subject matter that is complicated but should be simple. But maybe this movie shows that trying to make this issue a simple one has caused a lot of problems.
The film ends with a simple dedication “For Monica”. No explanation but none is needed. We all know someone in our lives who could be Monica.
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