Your Twenties: A Body Full of Cortisol

By Lucie Mohme

Cortisol has negative connotations. Most people probably associate it with stress. Indeed, cortisol is an essential hormone that ensures our functioning in increased stress situations and prevents inflammation. But when your brain is in a constant state of emergency,and the stress never stops, you might experience a surplus of the cortisol hormone. In that case, cortisol can cause various symptoms of sickness. The characters in Megan and Shannon Haly’s play, struggle with escaping this persistent state of stress.

Your twenties are a challenging time. That was the premise of the Haly sisters’ play. They were not just writing their first piece of theatre but also staging it at the Dublin Fringe and the Cork Arts Theatre as actresses. Their debut was directed by acclaimed stage director Jeda de Brí, who added a twist to the sisters’ initial text with performance techniques like synchronized speech acts and movements. Frankly, the play's story is not original to people who are immersed in contemporary coming-of-age novels, movies or theatre. Yet, some moments might speak to the audience, as the sisters have individual perspectives on struggling with intimacy, or self-reflection.

Izzy and Sam are making plans to travel together, promising each other to stay and figure out life together. But it develops as one might expect: Izzy figures it out and Sam doesn’t. Izzy eventually moves to Australia with her boyfriend, while Sam, struggling with her sexuality, life expectations, and her mother’s death in her early years, finds herself lost in Berlin, with an underpaid bartender job.

Sam feels overwhelmed and every question concerning money, relationships or her future releases cortisol in her body. The audience might experience it or remember their times at this point: constantly justifying your existence and explaining your future plans. At the same time, you are grieving for past friends who you still hang on to, like Sam and Izzy. And when Izzy and Sam truly try to hold on to each other, they argue. Their arguments culminate in insulting blows against each other. But what strikes, mostly, is that Sam cannot escape her vicious circle of self-pity. She rejects anyone who offers to help her. Lastly, she seems to make Izzy responsible for her situation as she left her behind.

Besides the main conflict, this performance is equipped with three circular platforms equally distributed across the stage. During their short dance sequences, or when one of them is standing behind the other ironically and silently miming the other’s words, emphasizing their disagreement, the performance creates a unique dynamic between the two sisters. De Brí shows rather than tells; she skillfully highlights certain emotions by letting the sisters speak through their movements. Additionally, a recurring metaphor dominates the play: “You have to jump.” This circles back to Sam playing a jumping game as a child, but it also alludes to Sam starting therapy and facing uncomfortable emotions. Of course, it should never be forgotten that some people are lucky to have the resources of therapy available, which the play might seem to brush over a bit too briefly.

Even though the writing is noticeably a debut and therefore not comparable with, for instance, Sally Rooney’s grasp on being in your twenties (by the way, where are the Rooney stage adaptations, please?), the Haly sisters give after all a conclusion that might encourage people to reevaluate their twenties and the false promises they made.