The Maids is Jean Genet's one act play about the relationship between two maids/sisters who, throughout the action of the play, engage in a perverse game of role-playing in which they impersonate one another as well as their hated mistress, and then take turns ritually killing her in mock murders. The Maids explores the master/servant relationship and raises questions about our civilized notions of human behavior and feminine ideals. It is loosely based on the true story of the Papin sisters who brutally murdered their employer and her daughter in Le Mans, France, in 1933.