Dancing Solo

Sixteen-year-old Kara, an aspiring modern dancer, struggles to complete a piece of choreography for entrance into a competitive dance program. Kara's teacher, David, demands that she find her own movements, her own steps. But as Kara works through her dance, her realities collide, and flashbacks, memories and fantasies swirl around her. Her dance becomes a metaphor for her desperate struggle to control her troubled life. Kara's mother is an alcoholic whose drinking sours all the important occasions in Kara's life and renders her home an embarrassment to hide from her friends. Her boyfriend, Jake, seems so perfect but is, in fact, dealing drugs. Her friend Melody shares good-time secrets with Kara but does not see that Kara needs far more from a friend. By hiding the truth about her mother, first from herself and then from her friends, Kara becomes trapped in patterns of denial and dishonesty. She must break those patterns to survive. Carol Evans, writing in Theatre for Young Audiences Today, said: "The writing is witty and rhythmic, striking dead-on with both the naive bliss of teenage euphoria and the depth of alcoholic lies... The play packs a wallop. I was moved to tears by the painful truth of the piece." Originally commissioned by the MUNY Student Theatre Project of St. Louis, Dancing Solo ran for two years, performing for junior-high and high-school audiences.