sliding scale.
Language Games is a smart and peculiar theatrical film, inspired by Ionesco and Beckett, and driven by current social mores and the fight for equality: Set in an absurd world of philosophy and language, Sheela joins three great thinkers from the past for a spirited game of mahjong. As they play, her energy conjures Joseph Beuys as a mythological hare. Invisible to the players, he interjects cultural incantations while the players contemplate how language evolved from naming animals to representing them with signs and how myths serve the human need to imagine. Physical chair-play creates an escalating rhythm as tensions build and the hare inspires Sheela to use more confrontational words. As the chair-e-ography builds to a crescendo, Sheela rejects the men’s sexism, and wins the game.