Shut Up, Shut Up, Shut Up

A neoclassical ballroom. Men in black robes, their faces hidden behind Venetian masks, stand around a circle of young, naked women. A man in a red robe orders them to kneel. The scene from Stanley Kubrick’s *Eyes Wide Shut* (1999) lingers in the memory. It is the climax of a night of wandering in which the eyes of the protagonist, played by Tom Cruise, are wide shut—to sexualized abuse. But weren’t our eyes also wide shut? Doesn’t the character of the wealthy host of the ball strikingly resemble Jeffrey Epstein? In *Shut Shut Shut*, Yana Eva Thönnes does not depict the masquerade ball itself, but rather its backstage—set in the rooms of Jeffrey Epstein’s estate: the surveillance room, the group shower, the changing room. Thousands of girls and women were abused there. *Shut Shut Shut* is preceded by a research trip that took Yana Eva Thönnes to New York. The production sheds light on a system of accomplices, those in the know, and victims, and reveals how complicity, dependencies, and silence are perpetuated. Above all, however, we see the girls: how they prepare themselves and what they are compelled to do, how they comb each other’s hair and tend to their wounds. We hear their fears and hopes for a better life—and what desire might mean beyond abuse.