Aphra Behn's The Rover

In 1677, poet, translator, libertine, and sometime spy for Charles II, Aphra Behn was the first published professional female playwright in the English language. Her play The Rover, or the Banish’d Cavaliers was wildly popular in the Court, but Behn was dismissed by critics as scandalous, lewd, and morally depraved, due to her frank address of female sexual longing.

The Rover on its surface is a fresh, lighthearted, and remarkably modern sex romp, detailing the amorous adventures of dashing English Cavaliers and a family of brave and beautiful Spanish gentlewomen at Carnival time. Masks and costumes allow these would-be lovers to break out of their everyday lives and play out their fantasies. But just beneath the play’s lusty facade, The Rover frees its female characters to kick at the cages of societal demands to be mother, wife, whore, or saint – and bites at unchecked power with shockingly sharp teeth.

The Hidden Room presents this rarely-performed delight through the lens of our favorite feminist-lined naughty entertainment – a few very special teen films of 1983 (with a very noted head bob to Martha Coolidge’s Valley Girl). So if you’re looking for a 1677/1983 mash-up of Restoration/New Romantic proto-feminist sexploitation, complete with swashbuckling sword fights, forbidden romance, masked revelers, and bitchen live music, then pop your ruffled collar and behold Aphra Behn’s The Rover.

York Rite Masonic Hall
311 W 7th Street
Austin TX 78701