Watch Me is a collection of three stories about unexpected performances in intimate settings.
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For most of my adolescence, I worked at a community theatre where I saw my fair share of amateur productions. I noticed that live performance has the power to be so deeply and often uncomfortably earnest, especially when the glitz and glamour of a professional stage show are minimal or non-existent. Low-budget community theatre had me considering the juxtaposition between big, theatrical moments of canonical productions and their portrayals in the dinky suburban rental theatre. Taking this contrast to its extreme, I began envisioning these productions in smaller and smaller venues, while the characters’ need to perform and communicate artfully remained as big and elaborate as ever.
The stories in this collection are asking:
What happens when characters with grandiose desires to perform for an audience can only enact their performances at home?
How do they bring in an audience and keep their attention? How does the audience feel about being implicated in someone's artistic vision?
In writing these stories, it became clear to me that there exists a mirror between these manufactured home performances, and the fact that everyone is always doing some sort of performing, with or without realizing. Whether it be our gender, stories of our past, visions of our future, our opinions, fashion etc, we end up seeing bits of ourselves in these characters as they move and monologue seemingly without ego, laying bare a universal desire for attention and companionship acted out and awaiting applause.
"Mostly Arm Movements" is a glimpse into an unusual monthly get-together between three women.
"It Doesn't Care About The Pears" is a two-part tale of a loft party that takes a turn for the surreal.
Written as journal entries, "The Matinee", looks at one person's experience in the gig economy, helping to bring a client's main stage dreams to life inside an apartment.
