Today I will be good.
Penelope sits at home on the island of Ithaca, waiting for the return of her husband Odysseus, dreading his death. If word comes of his death, she must marry one of her many, many, many, many suitors.
She is good. She waits. She feels no pleasure. She can’t make any mistakes.
She weaves a shroud. She bides her time. In the darkness, she pulls the threads back apart. She can’t finish it. She must finish it. If she doesn’t finish it she won’t have to marry. She will be faithful. She will be good. She is good.
A Good Woman presents Penelope’s inner world in a conversation between a violinist and a dancer, bound sometimes by string. What does it mean to be a good woman?
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Feel no pleasure.
A Good Woman is a collaboratively created dance theater show by Samantha Xiao Cody and Nerissa Tunnessen. The show is composed by Sam and choreographed by Nerissa. Text was written collaboratively.
The show was originally devised for the When Waves Collide Festival in Flemington, NJ where the pair showed a works in progress segment. The show premiered at the 2024 Richmond Fringe Festival and continues to develop and grow.
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About Us
Nerissa and Sam practice a cross-disciplinary investigation of form through text, conversation, and embodied practice. Working collaboratively, they are interested in interrogating the structures and histories of each medium, creating subtle critiques of “western” cannon to divine deeper meaning on the material impacts of those cannons on global power structures. Our work is process-driven, prioritizing exploration, improvisation, and conversation between artistic forms.
SAM
nerissa
Nerissa Tunnessen is a queer jewish dancer and choreographer from DC now based in Philadelphia, PA. With a BA in History from Vassar College, Tunnessen’s work often interrogates historical movements and subject matter with a contemporary twist. Recently, Nerissa has had the pleasure of showing work at Triskelion Arts, Asheville Fringe Festival, Richmond Fringe Festival, Kefalos Municipal Theater, the Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture, KYLD Inhale, When Waves Collide Festival, the River Dance Festival, and alongside Carne Viva Dance Theater at Urban Movement Arts. To find more about them visit Nerissatunnessen.com.
Samantha Xiao Cody is a queer, half-Chinese writer and violinist from Silver Spring, Maryland. She has performed both solo and ensemble pieces in Washington D.C., Princeton, New York, Dublin, Vienna, Budapest, and Prague, among other places. Their written work is published in the New England Review, the Missouri Review, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Philadelphia, where she likes to knit in her free time.
Project purpose
One of the first conversations that Sam and I had upon meeting was about our interests in interrogating the dynamics of desire. As queer femme presenting artists who experience life through the projection of womanhood, we discussed the confines of objectified desire: diving into conversations about compulsory heterosexuality, convincing yourself to find pleasure in the male gaze, and the manipulation of desire. We are curious about these topics both theoretically and as these concepts have impacted and shaped our lives and experiences.
Sam and I both spent much of our adolescences in the all-too codified world of classical art forms — ballet, classical violin, literature. As artists with backgrounds in classical techniques and cannon, we are both interested in the sociological restrictions of these backgrounds and the codified hierarchies of what is considered beautiful or correct or “good.” Having spent so many formative years surrounded by these ideals, we are both interested in breaking all the rules but also in manipulating these cannons to reflect larger ideas. While discussing the structured gender hierarchies of the ballet classroom we found ourselves coming back to this strange idea of “goodness.”
This is how we came to Penelope. In the classic Greek cannon, Penelope is considered to be a quintessentially “good” woman. For 20 years she waits for her husband (who, mind you, is not at all faithful to her) to return from the Trojan war, refusing to remarry or take part in any infidelity. The trick she plays on her many, many, many suitors who spend ten of those years vying for her title and body is what she is most known for: weaving and unweaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, claiming she will not take a new husband until the shroud is complete. She is celebrated as a figure of female fidelity, piety, and purity. At the same time, however, Penelope is seen as a trickster who lost much of her kingdom’s wealth to the suitors. She can’t win. Like Arachne, her weaving is referred to as “Penelope’s Web,” wherein she might trap the suitors, entertain their desires, hold them hostage, or manipulate them. Penelope can never be fully “good.”
At the same time, Penelope represents an elite class of women. She is a queen. She holds a position that is protected and privileged. Her status is both in conflict and in conversation with that of 12 of her maids, who are slaughtered by Odysseus upon his return. These 12 maids are used by Penelope: while they are her confidants, they are also her spies. She sends them out to be her eyes and ears among the suitors, knowingly placing them in danger of misogynistic violence. These concepts of projected desire, manipulated desire, coercion, and objectification are resonant in the case of the maids, even more so than in Penelope’s case. While she is removed from the day-to-day danger of rape and sexual violence, her maids are thrust into it. In fact, they are killed because of their status as objects. They are seen as dirty and soiled, having been raped by Penelope’s suitors, who, in doing so, are considered to have disrespected Penelope and Odysseus’ hospitality. The maids are seen as objects, stolen, used, and ruined. The violence that they experience only begets more violence.
We hope this piece will find people in the uncomfortable position of facing their own secret desires, pleasures, and fears of perception. We want this work to ask people how they relate between their internal and external selves. We want this work to consider the way that power plays into their own desires and wishes to be desired. We hope this piece only continues to complicate what it means to be “good.”