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Hauntings: Marking Flesh, Time, Memory

Deanna Shoemaker and Tessa Carr Perform in Honor of “Change the Conversation” Week


hauntingCommunication Professor Deanna Shoemaker and friend Tessa Carr performed their original show “Hauntings: Marking Flesh, Time, Memory” in honor of Change the Conversation week. The performance was held in the Hawk TV station on Tuesday, October 16 at 4:30 pm.

The show was about the aging of the female body and coming to terms with the aging process. “It’s something we don’t really talk about or acknowledge as a culture,” said Shoemaker. The show ran for about 45 minutes with a question and answer session provided at the end of the show.

“This collaborative performance explores themes of decay, loss, desire, and transformative discovery through the aging female body,” said Shoemaker. The show came to be following the loss of Carr’s best friend and she had trouble of coping with the loss.

The two worked together throughout the writing process, which started last November.

“I’m a massive note-taker,” Shoemaker said. “So I just kept writing a bunch of notes, and we’d sent it back and forth.” Since Carr lives in North Carolina, the duo worked on the show over Skype when they could not be together.

“The long distance process has been really wonderful for us, but also challenging,” said Carr.

“We have both done solo performances before but there’s some places I wouldn’t be able to go in a solo performance,” said Carr.

“It made us more courageous,” Shoemaker said.

It was a theatrical performance that used everything from hula-hoops to makeup and boas. Shoemaker spoke about the use of the hula-hoops in their performance, “The circular, ongoing motion somehow spoke to us. We’re always living, we’re always dying. We also love the endurance of the hula hoops.”

A slideshow of photographs was also used during the performance. The photos showcased Shoemaker and Carr dressed up like princesses in various different settings in nature.

“Deanna came to visit me and I had all these crazy costumes and we also knew that we wanted to play with these archetypes, but we didn’t know how, so we dressed up and ran around in the woods and my partner was nice enough to take pictures of us. And we wrote into the photographs,” said Carr.

“There was a part where Professor Shoemaker was doing stretches and rolling around on the floor. And it’s great; it just reminded me of my group of friends. I have some friends that go to the gym on a Friday night and make a night of it. It just goes to show at any age appearance is important to people, it’s a shame,” said senior Kimberly Kravitz.

“We aren’t really revealing things that are unique to us. To be able to sort of speak the unspeakable, the things that we often don’t want to talk about, things that are sort of taboo,” said Shoemaker. “Women who age in the culture are made to feel invisible. And going back to your younger selves being incredibly visible. We were trying to speak to a lot of things and we feel that culture gives us a lot of room to talk about it.”

Shoemaker and Carr said that they drew influence from Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver, performers who visited the University recently.

“We are absolutely influenced by them after being able to work with them,” said Shoemaker.

The performers were worried about the audience not being able to relate with the content of the show.

“It was revealing about what ‘older’ women think about their bodies and the physical activity done during the performance was engaging,” said senior Shelby Sopkin.

Shoemaker and Carr have performed this show about four times before showcasing it at the University. They said they are still writing into the script and finding ways to expand the show.

PHOTO COURTESY of Alexis Orlacchio