IN THE PROFESSIONAL ARENA

Sketches of a time spirit

Written, Choreographed, and Performed by Cynthia Oliver
Music by Jason Finkelman

Premiered at The Hot House (Chicago, IL), November 22 & 23, 2002

Sketches of a Time Spirit is a 15 minute solo work about a woman torn between her own identity and that of her respectable, refined, and always pulled together mother. Drawn from research on beauty pageant etiquette training in the Caribbean, personal stories of women in Oliver’s family and the lessons learned as a girl, this work expresses the pull, appeal, and resistance of the behavior of a “woman” as different from that of a “lady.” This work explores the pathos of the female psyche as this woman negotiates multiple ways of being at once.