>>PREVIEW
DOUGH: THE POLITICS OF MARTHA STEWART
Runs November 16 to 19, 21 to 26
Ground Zero Theatre and Pot of Jam Productions
Vertigo Studio Theatre (Tower Centre)
On March 5, 2004, Martha Stewart was found guilty on four counts of conspiracy, making false statements and obstructing justice. In that conviction, Lindsay Burns found her play’s voice.
Before Stewart’s conviction, Burns had been working on a project she tentatively titled Staff of Life. Through the process of bread making, she hoped to create a work addressed specifically to women. While the final product still employs a series of nine monologues titled by bread-themed terms like "Yeast" and "Knead," Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart plays on the legacy of a woman who made homemaking a multimillion dollar cultural behemoth.
Even though Stewart’s name is ubiquitous, Burns deliberately chose to avoid the obvious impersonation – the low, matronly "it’s a good thing" that brands the Stewart empire as recognizable as McDonald’s golden arches. Instead, the play focuses on nine female protagonists whose lives are each influenced by a self-critical culture where wallpaper choice can be a fundamental personal decision – from an upper-class Stewart cultist obsessively detailing her child’s birthday party to a clueless mother comparing her baby’s birth to her friends’ iPod purchases.
For Burns, the Stewart culture is a political fight, and an apt metaphor for addressing a worldview that is uniquely female. Even before audiences walk into the Vertigo Studio, they will see the show’s posters with a woman opening her lips to accept a long, pink baguette.
"I wanted the image to arrest people," she says of the poster’s phallic imagery. "This is about politics, and that is a sexually political image."
First premiered as a 30-minute piece at Theatre Junction’s Random Acts Festival in 2005, Dough is now in its fourth production with a spot in Ground Zero Theatre’s mainstage season, its third appearance for Calgary audiences.
After a stint as part of Ground Zero’s Groundbreakers series alongside Sean Bowie’s Drunken F*cker and her first Edmonton Fringe Festival production since 1988, Burns feels that her one-woman opus has finally reached a polished level that would make the eponymous maven proud. With the longest rehearsal period the show has enjoyed (two weeks), set and lighting designed by Sandi Somers, and scene transitions choreographed by Anita Miotti, the show has been given a thorough esthetic shine. Burns wouldn’t have had it any other way.
"Anything about Martha Stewart has to have beautiful esthetic," she says, adding, "I’m not playing on her esthetic. I’m playing on a darker, sexier esthetic. Lots of pink, lots of grey."
Like Stewart’s home empire, however, there is more to Burns’ show than its style. In true entrepreneurial spirit, the 42-year-old playwright and actress began the project as a way of motivating herself to create a play within the month before its premiere, a play whose lead was always intended to be none other than Burns herself.
"I was making the transition from actress to actress and writer, and I felt that I could achieve a certain level of success, but that people would never take my writing seriously unless I could show them how I felt it should go," says Burns. She will be starring in Vertigo’s production of Shear Madness later in the season. "I’ve been in this community since 1991, and it’s very easy for us to get a certain sense of what we can do. We’ve seen the shows, but I remember things like seeing (Elinor) Holt do Boy Gets Girl, and going, ‘I never knew she could do that,’ and getting so excited about her work.
"So this was an opportunity. No one is casting me in Tennessee Williams, so I’ll write someone who’s Southern-accented in Banff. It would be a shame at my age never to speak in that style. If I keep waiting for someone to provide me with the opportunity, it’s never going to happen.
"Which I believe Martha would very much support," she adds, "because it’s very do-it-yourself."
Certainly, Burns has built a brand with an admirably unified presentation, from the stage to the pink-accented playbill, posters and website, that she pragmatically asks me to mention (www.doughtheshow.com). After four incarnations, Burns has recognized at least one important lesson from the show’s ex-con inspiration: building a brand and selling a commodity.
"One thing I’m trying to learn, a Martha example, is trying to be a business person, not an artist," she says. "Not that I don’t believe this is an artistic statement, but, as well, it’s important to be a good business person.
"There’s no point in doing this if all the money gets dithered away." |
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