Orlando Weekly
3/9/06
PEELING BACK THE LAYERS
By Lindy T. Shepherd
Never before have I witnessed an investigation of stripping that cut so clearly through the myths and skewed perceptions of this marginalized occupation. Orlando actor/director/playwright John DiDonna's original drama Stripped , which he also co-directs (with Seth Kubersky ) for his Empty Spaces Theatre Company, is at once seductive and disenchanting. The unique identity of each of the half-dozen "dancers" in the cast is fully fleshed out, due to the spot-on dialogue penned by DiDonna and the fearless capture by the actresses themselves: Sarah French, Sarah Lockard, Dorothy Massey, Katie Merriman, Lauren O'Quinn and Yzaura Vanegas.
"My interviews were with many women, about 20 or so in person/on the internet/email/etc.," e-mails DiDonna, when questioned about how he got so close to the subject. "Most was focused however on about 6-8 locals who became the foundations for the roles. Not one role is one woman, they are composites of the lives of many women."
During the 90-minute show - no intermission - we watch and listen to the girls in their "club." There's a stage with two of the infamous poles, upon which they continually slide and spread to erotic effect. Behind and to the side of the platform is the "backstage" area, where we see the dancers in various stages of prepping and repose, cigarettes and heads hanging in poses of exhaustion and concession. In front of the stage, the girls perch atop barstools, as if they were in the club mingling with customers. But they talk only to us, never to each other, animatedly sharing their stories. Throughout the production, background techno music beats a steady rhythm.
The repeated rotation of the strippers from club to backstage to spotlight reiterates the sense of monotonous routine that underlies the provocative gyrations and baring of skin. At the show's opening, the women are fully dressed (at least as far as stripper gear goes). In turn, they start to chat about how they stumbled into the job. No matter the situation that led them there - one was homeless after the hurricanes, another couldn't feed her kid on minimum wages - it's always about cash. Progressively, the talk becomes more personal, and they begin to reveal more, both in their intimations and attire. Dresses are reduced to boy shorts and slinky tops, which fall away to thongs and pasties.
By closing time, we're hearing anger at their pride and defensiveness for the way they are treated as lesser people; at the men who use them, onstage and at home; at the life in which they are trapped. And we've heard commentary on all the myths and perceptions: about the power of their position in taking money from men; about the addiction to drugs and to money earned without an 8-to-5; about nonsensical laws and codes; about getting old.
By the end, when their tops fall away, one by one, it leaves the six women exposed - physically and emotionally. The electrifying sexuality of the strippers contradicted by the reality of the trade leaves its sting.
THEATER REVIEW Orlando Sentinel
Hearts are bared in dancers' stories
Rebecca Swain Vadnie | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted March 3, 2006
Whether we admit it, we seem to have a fascination with strippers.
There are so many stories projected onto them, whether outrageously campy caricatures or somber, tragic figures in modern morality tales. To feminists, they're symbols of a system of repression; to club customers, they're sexy dancers with distant gazes who persuade men to part with cash for lap dances night after night.
But the one story that usually isn't told is the true story of the woman behind the perfect makeup and four-inch heels, the reality she faces and the history that shapes her.
In the new play Stripped, writer and director John DiDonna presents a sort of theatrical oral history of strippers, turning his interviews with Central Florida exotic dancers into composite characters that reveal the other side of strip clubs.
"I let them talk," DiDonna says. "I wanted to hear what they had to say."
Stripped -- recently seen at PlayFest as a workshop production -- looks at why six strippers start dancing, why they stay in the industry and what happens to them. Several women help bring the play to life, including actresses Sarah French, Lauren O'Quinn, Sarah Lockard, Katie Merriman, Yzaura Vanegas, Dorothy Massey, and choreographer Anna De-Mers. This Empty Spaces Theatre production runs through March 11 at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center in Orlando .
Suzie, a woman DiDonna interviewed for the play, says she felt comfortable talking about what she calls an important but misunderstood part of her life.
"I trust that he [DiDonna] wasn't going to turn it into something ugly, that what I told him was safe," she says. "It was true to the emotions."
For some of the actresses creating the characters on stage, the experience of stripping -- both physically and emotionally -- was an eye-opening experience.
"It was really hard for me to do this show. I really looked down on [stripping]," Merriman says. "When I first read my monologue, I started bawling. It was me. It was personal. I realized how difficult it was for these women to sit down with John -- that's their heart on the stage."
As an actress, Vanegas took the role as a personal challenge but discovered something more as she worked on her character.
"You can't just put them in a box," she says. "It put me in the position of seeing my daughter doing this -- my perspective has changed."
One challenge the production faced was balancing between being serious and provocative. DeMers, the choreographer, initially clashed with DiDonna about the idea of the show. How would they present the women on stage without objectifying them -- a situation already happening in the clubs that they didn't want to repeat?
After visiting clubs, they found a compromise that would allow them to tell the women's stories with an authentic feel without venturing into exploitation.
"We took out the things that were most vulgar, but gave them enough to portray the story," she says. "The response [from the audience] often is 'I don't think I can go into a strip club again.' "
Titillation or not, though, the heart of the story is simple, as Merriman says.
"This is a show about women. They shouldn't be treated any more or less than the woman sitting next to you."
Rswain@Orlandosentinel.Com
Lakeland Ledger
Stripped
By John DiDonna
Directed by John DiDonna and Seth Kubersky
Empty Spaces Theatre Company
Lowndes Shakespear Center , Orlando Fla.
This is the classiest strip club you're likely to find in Central Florida , even with the burned out light bulbs in the dressing room. John DiDonna and the Empty Spaces Company took over the new Mandel Theater, removed the curtains and added a runaway with poles. Then he convinced 6 local actresses (and I mean real actresses, not the kind with quotation marks) to portray the lives of the girls who live off of taking off their clothes. The story is a composite of many interviews with real dancers, and while the details may be buffed up by the sources, it's an interesting look into the world of the partially dressed and desperate.
Sarah French plays the college girl from Alabama , and she seems happiest in this business. This contrasts with angry Sara Lockard, who vacillates between shame and pride in her profession. Lauren O'Quinn does it to raise a son, and perhaps she's the only girl who escapes to a "real" job. Katie Merriman looks like she'll live her life in this business, and doesn't care. I found Dorothy Massey the most interesting, as she played the true professional, and comes closest to displaying a distinct sexual ambiguity. But the saddest is Yzaura Vanegas, who works with the explicit encouragement of her husband. THAT'S kinky.
So what's the point? Strippers do it for the money, and while the biggest bill in anyone's garter was a single, that's theater economics more than stripping economics. There's a fine, wavering line between prostitution with intercourse, and just standing around naked for money. Tonight those two acts seem one, no matter what anyone says. Clearly both the women and the customers are victimized, while the owners and managers remain shadowy figures, unexplained and unintroduced. Some might suggest outlawing the whole business seems unworkable, but today's maze of conflicting regulations gives some societal control. "Stripped" raises as many questions as it answers, but better yet, it provides just as much titillation as Orlando will tolerate.
Published Thursday, March 2, 2006
ENTERTAINMENT
Script for `Stripped' Derived From Interviews With Exotic Dancers
By MICHAEL W. FREEMAN
The Reporter
ORLANDO
A woman with a young son is struggling to eke out a living. That becomes harder when her boyfriend gets angry one night and punches her in the face. Now she's out on her own -- with a child to raise.
Hunting among the low-wage, low-skill jobs she seems suited for, she discovers one that offers higher pay, tips, easy work and an opportunity to set her own hours: dancer in an exotic nightclub. And while she's not proud of the job and doesn't want her son to know where she works, it is a living and the bills get paid.
We never learn the names of the six women in "Stripped," a new, original play by The Empty Space Theatre Co. of Orlando. Then again, this show about nightclub dancers is not intended to tell the tale of six individual women.
The play was written and directed by John DiDonna, a familiar figure on Orlando 's theater scene; his past performances have included Frank N Furter in Theatre Downtown's 2004 production of "The Rocky Horror Show" and that same theater's 2005 Halloween play, "Poe," where DiDonna took on the role of Edgar Allan Poe in his final days. "Poe" intriguingly mixed fact -- Poe's death after collapsing on a street in Baltimore -- with fiction, namely dream sequences where Poe relived some of his best known tales.
"Stripped" takes a similar surreal approach. The play is billed as a "Docudrama" that looks at Orlando 's exotic nightclub scene. The play gives us six women who talk about what it's like to work in this adult-oriented field.
First, some thoughts on what "Stripped" is not. Despite the subject matter, this is no "Showgirls"-type sleaze, where the main goal is being explicit and a skimpy story gets built around sex talk. It's also not a "Valley of the Dolls"-type tabloid piece, pretending to document the sad world of exotic dancers, and portraying them mostly as drug addicts, hookers and nymphomaniacs.
In a brief introduction before the show started, DiDonna noted that the text is based on interviews conducted with current and former adult-entertainment workers. He documented their stories, and put them in his script. The roles are not based on six individual women; rather, DiDonna allowed their stories to intertwine.
The stage is mostly bare with tacky nightclub music playing in the background. The women start off discussing how they ended up in this field. For most, it was the lure of a higher salary than waitressing could bring; one says a customer offered her a job as a receptionist at his office. But at $7.50 an hour, it was a pay cut from the $100 a night she could pull in at the nightclub.
The world of exotic dancing isn't portrayed as being particularly glamorous. Some of them find it thrilling when they first go on stage; they're the focus of attention and men lavish praise on them for their good looks.
"I kind of felt like I was a superstar, performing for them," one woman admits.
But the excitement wears off quickly. One dancer describes how she tried to make her dancing more artistic, like an old fashioned burlesque show. But the audience didn't want that, she said, so she abandoned any pretense of mixing art into the act.
For most, it all becomes routine. They try to shield their jobs from their regular life, not always with success. One woman is put in an awkward situation when her boss calls all the workers in for a mandatory meeting, and she's forced to bring her son to the club. Another is humiliated when a customer from the club spots her in public with her family -- and loudly raves about her act.
DiDonna and a talented cast perform a delicate balancing act. On one hand, none of the women is given an individual identity, like a name and easy to relate to background. But at the same time, the actresses make them seem like real people, the kind you might find yourself chatting with at a slow grocery store line or at the bus stop -- or who could be your neighbor. These women are pragmatic, eager to earn a living with limited job skills. As one of them says, "The worst thing a guy can do is not pay me." A few, though, admit they fall victim to the easy availability of drugs at these clubs, or all the booze they want.
At times, the world of exotic dancing seems downright scary. One woman witnesses a customer putting a cigarette out on another dancer. Another had to quit her job when a customer became obsessed with her, and began stalking her. One worries about the diseases that get so easily passed around the club. Another complains that the club's managers don't protect them from rough costumers. This is one job where the laws against sexual harassment don't apply.
Interestingly, considering the subject matter, the show takes some moral stands, including sharp criticism of Central Florida 's vice squads and their periodic raids. "This is Central Florida -- this is Mickey Mouse land," one of the women complains. "They don't want us here."
Another recognizes how dangerous the obsession with exotic entertainment can become.
"I think a lot of our society is replacing real relationships for porn," she says. "It's like a crutch." But while this situation clearly puts women in an extremely vulnerable situation, she counters, "I think the guys are just as much victims as the girls are. They're just throwing their money away."
"Stripped" succeeds in presenting a calm, cool and low-key view of a subject that lends itself more readily to titillation. The actresses are wonderful, turning in likable girl-next-door performances that are not the least bit condescending or patronizing toward their characters. In the end, "Stripped" is a fascinating look at a downbeat subject. Men want women to be good girls -- that is, except when they want them to be bad girls and are all too willing to pay to accommodate them. Sadly, the women in "Stripped" understand this all too well.
"Stripped" had its premiere at Playfest, The Harriett Lake Festival of New Plays, which ended Feb. 19. DiDonna and his theater company are reviving the show, starting tonight.
Michael W. Freeman can be reached at Michael.Freeman@ theledger.com or at 863-421-5577.