The Cult Sisters
By anonymous
I lived in a theatre commune for the last two years of my young adult life. We produced political work and lived as a community in an industrial suburb in Northern Europe.
From the outside it seemed like a beautiful way of life. We lived in a converted factory; we toured the world and shared our lives with each other. I get a full body reaction just remembering it. My heart gets an achey, pangy feeling and my throat feels tight.
There was about 25 of us including babies and kids. We were from all over the world and spoke a wide range of languages. The group had been going for twenty five years when I joined. Our converted factory had everything we needed – kitchen, living room, bathrooms, two flats for the young families, a sewing room, a music room. Our huge cellar had a workshop exploding with all of our equipment. We had an event hall and a training hall. We slept in wagons and busses in the huge green garden. We didn’t earn much, but we were thrifty. We’d get beautiful mountains of thrown-out food from supermarkets.
Our working season was from March to November. In winter I’d go travelling or visit family back in the UK. The season began with training in the warmth of Southern Europe. Then we’d rehearse the shows for a few months in our factory and take them wherever in the world we’d been booked. In mid-summer we’d build a massive three week festival. Everyone did everything from organisation to set-building to cooking, cleaning and performing.
In the end the problems outweighed the beauty. I didn’t feel like my female voice held any value there. In my second year me and three friends secretly produced an album in the cellar about our struggles as women in the commune. We labelled it “Feminist Revolution Pop” and called ourselves The Cult Sisters. The cover art was a blurred-out unwanted dick pic one of the girls had been sent.
Our relationship to the ‘outside world’ was a little skewed because our working hours were so intense. The work that was valued was the physical heavy lifting, but by my second year I gave up on this and moved to the office. I worked long days on our marketing and social media but it never felt like enough. There were nights where I’d just think fuck it and go out dancing. As I’d leave the commune I’d feel so light I’d whoop with joy.
There were plenty of positives, though. We got to travel with the shows we put on which was a wonderful and enriching experience. I loved being on the tour bus. That’s where we could all just be together – reading, lying around, talking, listening to music and helping look after the young children. My friendships were intensely deep and special; another wonderful side effect of this beautiful and ugly place.
But it was pretty authoritarian. If someone worked into the night, that raised the bar for everyone else. There were lots of unspoken, unwritten rules about ‘giving to the group.’
Every day I tried to sense the mood of the group and fit into it. I’d often get taken on wild rides of emotions that weren’t even mine. Throughout the years, it was a jumbled mismatch of intensely good and intensely bad.
The end, though, was dramatic. At the end of last season I plucked up the courage to ask my boss for my salary. He looked up from his work and said very casually that we didn’t have any money -we’d spent it all. He showed me our bank balance and told me that if he paid me, he’d have to put the group into debt. He looked at me as if to say “Do you want to be the one who puts us into debt?”
I was distraught, confused and angry. I’d poured my heart and soul into that season. I’d schemed every day about how we could improve our marketing and publicity. I ‘d travelled far and wide to present our shows to festivals. It excited and thrilled me but deep down I just hoped that it would mean I was valued in the same way as one of the men.
I told one of the Cult Sisters what had happened about my wage for the season. She decided to go into our bosses office in just her towel to ask for her money. The money flowed into her bank with no trouble at all.
Shortly after, late one night, my boss called me into a meeting with the senior members of the commune, most of them men. I sat in a room for three and a half hours while they decided how much of my money I should be paid.
They described in detail the many flaws of my personality. I’d lived with these people for two years. After everything I’d done for them, their criticism tore me apart.
They mocked my so-called feminist attack. I shouted “Where are all the women? They’re gone! Until you start thinking about equality you won’t have any women left!” I held my own; I didn’t cry and kept my dignity. And I got my money.
I went home for the holidays but I was no longer myself. I couldn’t stop thinking about that horrific meeting. I’d never been so low. I had no appetite and no energy to do anything I enjoyed. Even leaving the house to go for dinner with my parents was a challenge like no other. I was hideously rude to my wonderful mother. The only thing I could do was watch documentaries on atrocities in third world countries to try and convince myself that my problem didn’t matter.
At night I’d have visions that I was back in that room where they said all those awful things. It was always the last thing I saw before I fell asleep.
So, of course, my rhythm was utterly fucked. It went on for way too long because it was too massive to face up to. I believed in the project and I was totally attached to the place. I’d spent my impressionable years there. The worst part was that their criticism made sense; I was demotivated a lot of the time. The atmosphere was so precarious I didn’t feel like I had the right to take control.
I was hurt and angry and in pain. when it became clear that most of the recent female recruits would be leaving after the end of the season I felt abandoned and like I’d failed somehow. I felt like I should have been the one to make it a safe place for them because I’d been there longer. I realise now this makes no sense.
Just before it was time to return from the winter break, the theatre group announced we would be organising a women’s theatre festival to celebrate female empowerment. This made no sense. Nothing was being done to address the clear sexism happening in our own theatre. Nobody was saying anything and I didn’t feel like I could. I wanted to scream.
But I felt I had no choice but to go back. Maybe I’d just exaggerated everything while I was away. Maybe it was a lack of Vitamin D from the long winter.
So I went back. Two days before, I felt physically sick. At the airport a kind boy moved to sit next to me and asked me if I was afraid of flying because I looked so serious. I realised then that it wasn’t a lack of Vitamin D.
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I tried to adjust to life in the theatre group but I couldn’t do it. How could I be creative with people I didn’t trust? Every day I hoped I’d find a way but I never did.
My two Cult Sisters and I realised we had to leave. My epiphany came after I overheard our boss telling a woman she was taking up too much of her husbands time by asking for help with their newborn baby. It was then that I realised I was out.
When I told him I was leaving my boss told me I needed professional help. I laughed. I certainly did after all of this.
One Cult Sister had recently miscarried. The reaction of the theatre group was inhuman. When she couldn’t participate in training, one of the men said “but it’s all out now, isn’t it?” Another made a horrifying joke about contraception. Our boss made a comment about woman’s varying abilities to carry children. When my sweet, vulnerable friend told them she could no longer stay there, she was simply told to pack her stuff and leave without goodbyes.
Then the technical director hit our remaining Cult Sister on the butt so hard it left a bruise. She told him to fuck off but he just laughed. When she told them she was leaving she was bombarded with sexist comments. “It’s your own fault, you were flirting with him and leading him on,” “You need to be careful of the way you act around men,” “In the real world you’d just have to keep quiet and deal with this yourself.” The only person to stand up and support her was the wife of the guy that had hit her. She said that you cannot possibly deny the way a woman feels about an unwanted smack to her body.
So me and my Cult Sisters loaded a car with all our possessions and drove away from the theatre group to a the safe haven of our friends house. We screamed for miles and miles. When we got to the house I collapsed on the pavement – my legs wouldn’t hold me anymore. All I could do was sob.
We stayed in the safe bedroom of our sweet and good friend. It was her birthday and she was celebrating with her friends in the kitchen directly below us. In her bedroom we let it all come out – the unfairness, the trauma, the huge, utter loss, all in big gulping sighing cries. This lasted for a while and then we fixed our faces and went downstairs to join the party because the outside world had waited long enough.
