After a long Friday of classes and work, audience members settled into Hepburn Theater in anticipation of the Bryn Mawr Performing Arts Series’ Wintry Mix performance, unsure of what to expect behind the red curtains. This cabaret-style setlist has historically consisted of professional artists whose works, though independently created, blend into a mesmerizing choir of song, dance, and dialogue.
After coordinator Jessica Johnson goes through audience etiquette and expectations, the house lights dim and the spotlight shines onto the still-closed curtains. Out from the side door walks the first performer, singing “No Mas” from the 2021 theatrical production Siluetas, a song about finding our identity and not tolerating anything less. Her singing mixed elements of acting and vocal performance as she set the scene for the night as a driving, impactful series of performances. Afterwards, she introduces herself as Jessy Gruver, a Philly-based performer, who, along with Temple University alum and fellow performer Garrick Vaughan, are our hosts for the night. Their introductions are quick, and not before long, the lights dim again.
As the curtains rise, they unveil cyanotype tapestries and a performer standing among them. Erosive Elements (Shannon Murphy) is the first performance, led with languid, dreamlike music accompanied by sharp narrations of various words. Some are strange and elicit laughs from the audience, like “nail polish remover” and “spreadsheets”. Others strike a deeper chord: “apathy,” “shame”. As the performance continues, the music crescendos and accelerates until the blue light is replaced with pink and the narration stops. From the center back of the stage, the performer tries, but fails, to advance towards the audience. She gradually lowers to the ground until she lies still, and the curtains close around her.
Piano music cuts through the silence, as the next performer peeks through the curtain and breaks the fourth wall, speaking directly to the audience. This is Rose: You Are What You Eat, performed by Rose Jarboe, who is reflecting on her queer identity after learning about a twin sister she ate in the womb. On stage, she’s wearing a strange hockey uniform-dress hybrid with powerful, glittery boots and a helmet adorned with rose designs. With sarcastic humor and humbling grace, Rose walks us through a preface of their performance, “A Coming Out”, before dropping their hockey helmet into the lap of a front-row audience member and running off stage, promising to catch us again later.
The next performance begins with just a figure on center stage, bent over with her hands splayed behind her knees. The next act was “Consent” (Megan Bridge), a reclamation of feminine sexuality. The dance mixes elements of hip-hop, rock music culture, and ballet as the performer dances to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, which feminist musicologist Susan McClary previously compared to an act of rape. But as the tempo and volume fluctuate, the performer’s actions contest this idea; exhibiting yoga-like and meditative qualities at slow parts, but being jaunty and sharp at staccato moments, she expresses a freedom that defies this definition of the song. Moments of vulnerability and fun shock the audience before the performer returns to her initial position, repeating the same movements until the music fades away.
Vaughan, one of the hosts, returns again now to continue the performance of Siluetas. His performance of “These Days”, just like Gruver’s, uses vocal performance techniques to replace the absent musical set. The performance is short but powerful, and ends with Vaughan frustratingly exiting the stage, reflecting the songs’ themes of struggling with acceptance.
The curtains open again and the audience is met with blinding blue light. In “Dream TV” (Chelsea Murphy, Chloe Marie, Dylan Smythe), the three performers model the expanding and contracting network of human connection, related to our loss of attention. Each dancer got their own solo movements, where their slow movements reflected a sense of loneliness and disconnection. But as the act went on, their movements came together, guided and connected by their hands sliding across each other’s bodies. Though much less sensual or intimate as it may sound, they moved the audience’s eyes across the stage, entrancing within the TV-like scape, before contracting back into a small pod, the lights and curtain coming down around them.
The next act raised questions right from the playbill description. “One-Man Nutcracker”, performed by Chris Davis, is an abbreviated parody of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker Story and the original ballet, but every role is played by the same man, a ballet prodigy who tragically could no longer perform due to a foot injury. With comedic inclusions of the red pill / blue pill metaphor and a sudden Lady Gaga dance break, the act tied in just enough elements of humor with the original tale of Marie’s Christmas to tell a somewhat true story of the Nutcracker.
After the brief intermission, the curtains now revealed a casual living room scene, with the performer lying on the sofa. In we’ve come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism, performer and writer Jenn Kidwell’s impressive narration and acting skills perfectly encapsulated the united feeling we have today; what is the point of it all? Sprinkled with a couple more expletives, her anger and disillusionment with society can be felt through her powerful monologue. Additionally, she engaged members of the audience, encouraging them to share their “devil nuggets”, a potential metaphor for a guilty pleasure, a forbidden obsession, or devious habit.
The lights deceptively come on, yet the house remains silent. There is heavy breathing, and from behind the curtain, the performer begins narrating a birth. In 100 ways to make an entrance, choreographer and death doula Annie Wilson grapples with motherhood, trying to put into words the feeling she has towards her baby daughter next to all the other love she’s experienced in her life. Orating cynical perspectives of having a child to dashing around the auditorium, mimicking the exhilarating feeling of chasing a young loved one, her complex and nuanced feelings about motherhood culminate in a reenactment of the moments at the surgery table, when she was just a human bringing another human into this world.
Finally, Rose Jarboe returns, taking back her helmet and casting it aside. This time, she performs Dear Mom, a reenactment of her coming out to her varsity tax accountant, Midwestern mother. She teaches the audience how to become her mother, saying “Yes, yes, don’t be ridiculous” and repeating back to her (and if I may add, in a truly impressive choral way) each hesitant statement of her coming out story. Rose grapples with her identity through this encounter, though the audience is shielded from truly knowing how her mother feels in the end; is she accepting? But this openness is a part of the story, and as Rose sheds the strange alteration of a hockey uniform, she reveals a rose-covered dress as faux rose petals fall from the sky. In this finale, I was struck by the rawness of her story; the reckoning with her unique identity, but acceptance that there couldn’t be anything that would change her.
After the performance ends, the performers return to the stage, now as ordinary people. Like any great artist, they had joined the audience to watch their peers. To conclude the show, a brief questionnaire section allowed audience members to ask the artists anything and for the artists to share their process and experiences. On the second night, the show concluded with a closing celebration, where refreshments were served. This performance was hosted by the Performing Arts Series, whose future performances can be found here. Tickets are free to Tri-Co students but are also open to the public.
