The Happiest Medium » Scout Durwood

Lipshtick (Fringe Festival 2011)

Michelle Augello-Page — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 05:26:08 +0000

Lipshtick is an ambitious play, taking the audience on a funny, poignant, and complex journey through what it meant to be a woman in 20^th century America amidst a media blitzkrieg mirroring society’s perceptions, ideals, and images, while seeking to expose how women internalize and externalize these expectations as they struggle towards a sense of self and continue to define the realities and experiences of being female in American society in the present.

Written by Romy Nordlinger and Adam Burns, “Lipshtick” is centered around the Make-Me-Over Show, a reality T.V. show which eavesdrops on women’s lives by hacking into their media devices in order to find the next contestant to win an appearance on the show. The lucky winner will receive the ultimate make-over, becoming the very image of society’s ideal woman.

Lipshtick is brilliantly directed by Bricken Sparacino, whose deft touch is felt throughout the play, as complicated political, philosophical, psychological, and socio-economic issues are tempered with humor and humanity, resulting in a seamless, moving, and powerful work of Art.

The three MC’s of the Make-Me-Over Show (Scout Durwood, Aja Houston, Romy Nordlinger) enter the scene with matching outfits – bouffant wigs, white lab coats, and cat-style glasses – shimmying, shaking, and singing in unison like a girl group of the 1950′s on Acid. The dialogue among the MCs is extraordinarily clever and utilizes rhythm, rhyme, and sharp wit, giving the actors the opportunity to truly shine as a team, as they work together and play off each other to complete each other’s sentences, speak and sing in unison, and reflect the warped, surreal, and savage world of the media through the lens of the Make-Me-Over Show.

Brilliant and ruthless collages of various media (television shows, commercials, and movies) projected at intervals throughout the play serve as an additional ever present character and reflect the media’s role in shaping and reflecting society’s image of women during various periods of time. The visual design by Adam Burns employs innovate projection techniques and uses video as stage-set, projected backdrop, and visual and auditory back-story; the frenetic movement of the collages mirror the daily assault of media in our lives.

In the search for the next “winner” to appear on the Make-Me-Over Show, the audience is taken on a series of vignettes exposing and exploring the places American women found themselves at different points during the 20^th century. Throughout these vignettes, each actor is given the spotlight to weave a spell over the audience, sharing their individual and powerful talents as they unfold and embody several characters. Scout Durwood, Aja Houston, and Romy Nordlinger are extremely talented actors, able to stretch, create, and open up the worlds of vastly different characters with humor, physicality, and heart-breaking humanity.

Scout Durwood’s character of Maggie, a working class middle-aged housewife at odds with sexual liberation, begins her vignette gossiping as she does the laundry. She yells at neighbor kids, and makes the audience laugh with her wit and sharp observations. As she downplays her own sexuality, her beauty becomes more insistent and recognizable. As she explores her role as a woman and housewife, Durwood’s Maggie is simply and beautifully revealed, leaving us with a woman struggling with questions of love and marriage, trying to find meaning and purpose in her life as a woman confronting her own evolution in a rapidly changing world.

Aja Houston’s character of Edith, an old woman reflecting on her life alone after her husband’s death, begins her vignette taking care of and talking to a plant. We discover that the plant holds her husband’s ashes, and that she is addressing her late husband. This character holds deep maturity as she reflects on her age, on love, and on life with her husband. Houston’s Edith is all heart and hope, an old woman having made mistakes, having learned some lessons, and finding at her mature age, a surprise – a bud on the plant, promising, even as women grow old, their magnificent potential for flowering.

Romy Nordlinger’s character of Kathy, an adolescent girl trying to make sense of her place as an emerging woman and wrestling with questions of sexuality and image, begins her vignette playing with a Barbie doll and a Ken doll. In a heartbreaking moment, she reflects upon her changing body, so unlike Barbie’s ideal figure and long blonde hair, and wonders if she can still be beautiful. Nordlinger’s Kathy is expertly woven; her naïveté and youth is handled with humor and sensitivity, and her confusion, awkwardness, and desire to understand her sexuality and what that means in an adult world, is rooted in all of us.

At the end of the play, a “winner” is chosen; however, the winner does not want to appear on the Make-Me-Over Show show. Her refusal to buy into society’s version of what it means to be a woman causes a breaking down of the very system on which the show is built. In a frenzied deconstruction, the three MC’s smear lipstick on their mouths and attempt to strip away the pervasive and damaging messages from media and society, resulting in an ending reminiscent of the second wave of feminism, returning us to the questions raised in the early 1970s when women burned their bras, the demand for a new dialogue as to what it means to be a woman in society, and to define these questions with better answers.

There is one more chance to see Lipshtick as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at the lovely Dixon Place Theater: August 24 @ 6:15.

~~~

Lipshtick
Writer: Romy Nordlinger & Adam Burns, Video Design by Adam Burns
Director: Bricken Sparacino

1h 30m

www.lipshtickbaby.com
VENUE #5: Dixon Place
Wed 24 @ 6:15

FRIGID New York Festival 2011 – Five Questions For: Hi, How Can I Help You?

Karen Tortora-Lee — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:56:33 +0000

Welcome back to another installment of FRIGID New York Festival 2011 Q&A! We’ll be running these throughout February until the Festival starts, so be sure to check back to read all about the great shows that will be taking part in the festival. Also – don’t miss the winner-take-all game of Rock Paper Scissors! Today’s Q&A is with Scout Durwood who is the Writer and Performer of Hi, How Can I Help You?

The silly side of the sex industry: a one woman musical. Six women at a NYC house of domination navigate the volatile economy of the sex industry during a recession, the night of Barrack Obama’s 2008 presidential election. They laugh, they cry, they roller-skate and hula-hoop.

Hi, How Can I Help You? featuring Scout Durwood (Photo by Helene Delillo)

answers by Scout Durwood – Writer/Performer

Antonio Asks: What makes FRIGID such a warm and welcoming experience for your production?

Frigid is a super artist-friendly festival. It’s financially easy to produce and there is such a sense of community within the festival and all of its participants. I tend to be a fan of most things Horse Trade in the first place, and this festival is a great example of what they do best. And I love The Kraine. It’s an amazing space.

Diánna Asks: What about this play do you feel most drawn to personally, and because of that, what message do you hope the audience walks away with?

This show took over two years to go from first draft to opening night (which we did at The Edinburgh Festival this past August.) Because of that, the characters have been in my life for long enough that I’ve really grown to love them and have had the opportunity to live in their bodies for much longer than I usually get to with a solo show, so they have a whole heap of backstory. Every voice and character in the show has been with me through all the blood, sweat, temper tantrums and tears it’s taken to get the show this far, so at this point (and without sounding totally nuts-o) they’re about as close to real people as fictional characters can get.

I have a lot invested in this show emotionally and otherwise, and it’s fun as a performer to get to play with stakes onstage when they are as high as they are in Hi, How Can I Help You?. I think the audience knows that. Audience members tend to respond to and connect with one character in particular, different for each person, but when we’ve talked to past audiences, they’ve all had strong opinions about conflicts that come up in the show. It’s awesome to hear people express genuine concern for Charlotte, contempt for Genevieve, or empathize with Jane.

Karen Asks: That’s some title. How did you come up with it – and what does it mean?

Ha. Well, the show was originally concieved to be a story about “children at play.” Early in the writing process, I came across an article in The Post about a dungeon and mistresses that had been arrested, and I thought, what better playroom than a dungeon! So I spent about nine months in and out of a dungeon poking my nose around and trying to sniff out the lay of the land.

“Hi, how can I help you?” is what the phone girl says every time she answers the phone, so on a busy day, it became like a constant little background noise for everything else that transpired. My favorite times were watching that poor phone girl run around like a crazy person answering the door, the phone, keeping clients from bumping into each other. It was really freakin’ hilarious. That dungeon was one of the least serious places I have ever been, so it was funny to me to think that in session these women were being so hard core because in the staff lounge, it was a laugh a minute. And the fights between mistresses were always amazing. Women know how to freakin fight, emotionally, physically and otherwise.

Stephen Asks: You must have a favorite part of your show. What makes it your favorite?

There’s a song that I sing towards the end of the show called “Whiskey on the Brain” that just breaks my heart every time I sing it. I sing the song accompanied by rhythms I make on my body, and it’s one of the few dramatic points of the show. I think the combination of its being so raw and so sad and so dear to me, personally, makes it my favorite part of the show. Sometimes it feels good to just fuckin’ sing.

Lina Asks: How much of your show was inspired by true events?

The actual overarching plot of the show is entirely fictional. Most of the “based on a true story stuff” I borrowed from the women I worked with in writing the show is in the details: little things they said that I thought were funny or poignant or important. None of the characters are based on any actual people. Most of them are pieces from different women that I smashed together to make a cohesive show. It’s always funny to see what people think is real and what is made up. They’re usually pretty off base, but I have been caught a couple of times and had to lie my way out.

THM Bonus Question: If you could play a virtual game of Rock, Paper, Scissors with another FRIGID Show which show would you take on? And what would you throw?

I will take I Don’t Think I Like the Way You Licked Me on any damn time. I’ll be throwing scissors, and I will cut you, Bricken. Your name rhymes with “chicken,” and I adore your work, but you’re going down. This party is BYOB: that’s bring your own boo-yah!

Thanks Hi, How Can I Help You? – for participating in The Happiest Medium’s FRIGID New York Festival 2011 Q&A. And for playing our game! You’re officially SCISSORS. So you may win TWICE. Or, not at all. This is how it works in the crazy world of the VIRTUAL ROCK PAPER SCISSORS TOURNAMENT!

Meanwhile, for the rest of you – don’t forget to check out Hi, How Can I Help You?

Hi, How Can I Help You?

Written by Scout Durwood & Directed by Lucile Baker Scott

Presented by Mighty Little Productions Brooklyn, NY

The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street) $12
Thu 2/24 @ 10:30pm, Sun 2/27 @ 7pm, Tue 3/1 @ 9pm, Fri 3/4 @ 4pm, & Sat 3/5 @ 8:30pm