Director's Note
Since getting the exciting invitation last year from Phamaly’s artistic director, Ben Raanan, to direct Dance Nation, I’ve been eagerly describing it to anyone interested as “a totally feral play.”
Not simply a wild thing, a feral creature is going through some degree of tension in its relationship to domestication. An animal in the natural world isn’t feral until some force attempts to fence it in. Or until a domesticated creature feels the call of the wild, beckoning to it to break free.
What better way to describe adolescence?
We who’ve lived through it, describe it so casually. “Oh, the hormones of it all!” But, as a perimenopausal human plunged once again into a sea of fluctuating hormones, I am reminded: This is some real-ass shit. I’m expected to do #adulting while my body and mind are rattling my body’s cage. I just want to howl, “AAAHOOOOO,” throw the laptop out of the window, jump through it and run for the hills on all fours, shedding any restrictive clothing along the way.
The teens in DANCE NATION are trying to figure out what it means to feel their natural and wild bodies, an unbridled power brewing inside. To make matters more intense, they are competitors, a team bent on wowing judges and beating other dancers. They compete against one another, too. Friend against friend. And they even compete against their own desires. Suffice to say, the young girls in this play live in the place between “Go for it!” and “Not like that!” It’s a sequined world that can feel anything but natural, but the smell of a win calls to them... AAAAHOOOOO!
Three last things to keep in mind as you watch:
1. Clare Barron asks us to resist casting only actors who resemble teenagers. Regardless of anyone’s specific teen experience, the teens we were never disappear from inside of us. And when we were teenagers, in some ways, we were already the people we would grow up to be. Enjoy the juxtaposition.
2. Clare requires us to ensure a range of bodies onstage. Activate Phamaly power, aaaand, check!
3. Clare warns us against casting only those with dance talent. “In fact,” she says, “better if the actors possess no real dance talent.”
I believe you’ll find we didn’t adhere to that third suggestion. And as you watch these characters, inhabited by bodies of all types, ages and abilities, you’ll understand why Phamaly chose DANCE NATION for the feral, undomesticated story it is. Of the fight to own our bodies, navigate a world of unfair expectations, and redefine true victory our own way. AAAHOOOOOOOOO!
GerRee Hinshaw
Director
