May 10, 2007
‘Getting Undressed’ explores youthful fears, blurred boundaries
Description: Getting Undressed: A Performance Art Piece, to be performed Thursday through Sunday, May 17 through 20 at the Ethnic Cultural Theater, combines dance and theater, exploring how conversation, clothing and movement shape identities. What: Getting Undressed: A Performance Art Piece When: Thursday – Saturday, May 17-19, 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, May 20, 2 p.m. Where: Ethnic Cultural Theater, 3940 Brooklyn Ave. NE, Seattle Tickets: Free, but there is a $7 suggested donation. Reserve tickets by e-mailing gettingundressed@gmail.com More information: http://www.gettingundressed.net |
Getting Undressed: A Performance Art Piece, to be performed Thursday through Sunday, May 17 through 20 at the Ethnic Cultural Theater, combines dance and theater, exploring how conversation, clothing and movement shape identities.
Artistic directors Leah Schrager, a UW senior in dance and biology, and Shannon Narasimhan, a recent graduate in dance and biology, had talked for 18 months about staging a performance piece. But the project didn’t become real until novelist and UW English professor Shawn Wong and his former student, Kaia Chessen, volunteered to write a short story for the two women, and the latter received $12,000 from a Mary Gates Endowment Venture scholarship.
Staging the performance has been an adventure for everyone. “We learned a lot about communication among the artists involved, how we work between artistic disciplines,” said Schrager.
Getting Undressed follows fashion designer Carla, her carpenter boyfriend, Eric, and their acquaintances as they move between the street and their apartments. As the performance progresses, the couple find themselves unsure of each other. It happens as Carla works on her designs and watches a woman in another apartment, and Eric works on a carpentry project — a bed of nails — and wonders about Carla.
“The performance is about idiosyncrasies and neuroses, and how those guide relationships,” Narasimhan said.
In the performance, however, the characters don’t have names. “It’s not important that they have them,” Schrager said. “Who they are is more important.”
Wong met Schrager when she was his student in a creative writing course two years ago in Rome. She later introduced him to Narasimhan.
Wong saw the performance as a chance to explore communication and movement. “The story is written not so much to exist as a story,” he said, “but as something Shannon and Leah could interpret.”
And as the result of the interpreting, Wong and Chessen may reshape their story.
The performance has also changed as artistic directors, actors and musicians work together. Musicians, for example, have become actors, and actors have suggested changes in the music.
Most people directly involved with the production are either UW undergraduates or recent graduates. Besides Schrager and Narasimhan, performers include Ben Rapson, Devin McDermott, Rebecca Drapkin, Whitney Fliss and Josh Rawlings. Evan Flory-Barnes composed the music, Erin Skipley of Yoshimi Designs created costumes and Maridee Slater designed the sets.
Both Schrager and Narasimhan have performed with the Chamber Dance Company. Schrager has been named one of four A&S Dean’s Medalists for 2007. She was awarded a 2005 Dance Program Scholarship and a Mary Gates grant for an ethnographic study of modern dancers. Narasimhan received the Evelyn H. Green Endowed Scholarship and an Undergraduate Research Travel award, both in 2006.
