This behind-the-scenes video, created by designer Susan Muirhead, has been available in our lobby for audiences of When She Danced for the past few weeks. Along with rehearsal footage, it features director (and founding TimeLine Company member) Nick Bowling and actor Jennifer Engstrom discussing the incomparable Isadora Duncan, a challenging script that includes characters speaking in six different languages, and a production design that takes us to Paris in 1923.
From the video:
“When language fails, it’s really necessary to communicate in a different way,” Jen, who plays Isadora, says. “Certain things are impossible to describe with words — Isadora’s dancing, for example. People who saw it, it changed their lives and it touched their soul in a way that can hardly be described.”
“Isadora is every bit as important to dance as Picasso was to painting,” Nick says. “She is a renegade, and influenced millions of artists to come after her. That makes her somebody worth understanding. And that is what this play is really trying to do. Trying to get at the heart of this astonishing woman.”