Even prizes come at a price – as five women who have been nominated by the state for their “feminine lifetime achievements” will find out. Only one can be the winner, and so, shortly before the award ceremony, a competition ensues about who had to make the biggest sacrifices. Was it Rita who had laboured her way up the old-fashioned way, from secretary to CEO of a globally operating conglomerate? Was it the top executive Tanja whom Rita considers to be the epitomical “Harvard consulting chick” and who, despite her four children, also holds a leading position? Or is it Martha, a judge known for her strictness, who presently has put all plans for a family on ice –literally - and who found herself, at the beginning of her career, “with four men’s toilets, that’s it”? Shouldn’t Katie, the socially active Kindergarten teacher, get the award? Or Brenda, the mathematician, who is transgender and had herself turned into a woman? Even the word “feminine” is rejected by all five of them because it alludes to genderism. Until it becomes clear that we are actually watching five actors/actresses rehearsing a play, and this gives the term “female roles” a new dimension. With Mistresses, Theresia Walser steps into a mine field and battleground of the current gender debate, thus reflecting viciously, as well as with loving irony, on what is human, what is mechanistic, what is attribution, and what is truly one’s own.
