Just Like Hollywood

Overview

JUST LIKE HOLLYWOOD continues the decades-long collaboration between Melanie Stewart and John Clancy (KILL ME NOW, A SIMPLE FACT OF PAIN, STICKY) working at the crux of contemporary dance and theater practice. Joined by performers Kylie Westerbeck and Dane Eissler this new work centers on, explores and explodes the entrapment and degradation of a young woman in contemporary America.

On a bare stage, using only props supplied by a demanding and impatient master of ceremonies, Westerbeck must justify her continuing survival and prove her worth, her right to exist. Is she a beauty queen? An obedient dog? A willing lover or a wanton whore? What is the combination, what is the key to unlock the cage she exists in, she has been born in and she will die in if she cannot escape?

What will satisfy her captor? What does he want? Does he know?
And is he trapped as well?
Caught in the male gaze, trapped onstage, forced to perform, to dance and please, at what point will she rebel?
Are they destined to combat each other, both caught in a larger fight neither chose?
Does one have to win for there to be a peace, a communion?
Maybe there’s another way out.
A rigorous and playful study of status and the eternal male/female dance and duel, JUST LIKE HOLLYWOOD (I SEE YOU WATCHING ME) examines the trap ensnaring so many women today, an invisible but all-encompassing prison she is raised in and taught to accept, if not embrace.

 

About the Artist

Blind Faith Theatre is a production company that produces darkly absurd movement-driven theatre focusing on the nuanced, weird, and vulnerable side of American culture. The projects of the company integrate movement, text, and image to explore the ability of the body to carry meaning in original narratives that are often ironic and intensely human. The company is led by Philadelphia based director/choreographer Melanie Stewart who directed Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre for 25 years. Works she has presented at Philadelphia Fringe include; Perfect: A Bouffon Musical, Underlife a Song-Cycle Cabaret, Hard Candy, Babel, Kill Me Now, Kill Me Now Rowan Edition and In America That is to Say Nowhere.

Just Like Hollywood is the first production of Blind Faith Theatre. The production is the result of Stewart's decades long collaboration with Obie Award winning Playwright John Clancy, (Kill Me Now, Simple Fact of Pain and Sticky). Joined by performers Kylie Westerbeck and Dane Eissler, Just Like Hollywood (I see you watching) centers on, explores and explodes the entrapment and degradation of a young woman in contemporary America.

Melanie Stewart/Blind Faith Theatre brings artistic collaborators together to devise original theatre that is socially relevant focused on creating intimate relationships with our audiences.

Credits