“How to survive in a world populated by scum?”, Jacques Rivette once wrote of Paul Verhoeven’s film. In 1995, the Dutch director filmed the grandeur and decadence of Las Vegas as a premonitory metaphor for an America that gorges itself on crass vulgarity and crushes people. The incandescent and obscene film shows without comment the fate of a young woman who has come to try her luck in the city of gambling and easy money. She accepts all kinds of humiliations and becomes a predator herself, ready to do anything to survive. Poorly received by critics and audiences alike on its release, it is now recognised as a monument of queer counter-culture, camp and pop expressionism; a cult film in which lightness, glitter and glitz describe the struggle of classes and sexes and relationships of domination and submission. Showgirls is a major film about gender, its violence and its metamorphoses.

Showgirl premiered in 2021 at Théâtre Saint Gervais, Geneva. Its concept, text and performance are by Jonathan Drillet & Marlène Saldana, freely Inspired by Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 film, and has original music Rebeka Warrior.