Sweat Girls: Writing Solo as Collaboration

BY Becky Brett

“Find your Isadora moment,” says Ann Boyd. “Find your own circuitous path.”

It is as much a stage direction given in rehearsal as a metaphor for Chicago’s monologue divas, the Sweat Girls. Their new show, Sweatily Ever After, opens Oct. 21 on the West Stage of the Raven Theatre and runs for four weeks until Nov. 18. This show features four of the Sweats—Dorothy Milne, Clare Nolan, Martie Sanders and Pamela Webster—along with several additional artistic collaborators.

The Sweat Girls—Jane Blass, Cindy Hanson, Milne, Nolan, Sanders, Jenifer Tyler, Webster, and in the beginning Rose Abdoo—began performing their original, autobiographical monologues in 1993. Their first show, I’m Sweating Under My Breasts, was wildly popular and finally garnered critical acclaim late into its eight-month run. These veteran Chicago actors have continued their signature monologue shows, while creating new ways to incorporate ensemble into what is essentially solo work. In addition to self-producing, they have performed in New York and in San Francisco, at Live Bait’s Filet of Solo festival here in Chicago, and at the Acorn Theatre in Three Oaks, Michigan.

Shows like Cirque du Sweat in 2003 and their current production explore how ensemble can be used in support of solo work without taking the focus off the core monologue format that is their trademark. Both Cirque and Sweatily are directed by Boyd, with musical compositions performed by Teri Foster. The latter expanded the Sweats’ artistic expression beyond words and into the realms of movement and music.

We had the opportunity to sit down with all four Sweatily Ever After heroines and their director to talk about their process, and how things change when you have additional collaborators and production elements. Oh, and a budget.

The Sweats received a grant (their first) from the Driehaus Foundation and, as Sanders said, they asked themselves, “Why don’t we let some other people in on this?

“We sought another artist to share our good fortune, and ended up inviting a dancer in to do a prologue to our monologues,” Sanders added. That dancer/choreographer is Julia Mayer, and she has created a prologue dance called “Once Upon,” which she will perform before the Sunday shows.

Sweatily actually started as a found object piece, and when they really started to explore the idea of lost and found, they saw that it had bigger reverberations in their lives. Sanders described their explorations of lost and found as, “What you let go of and discover, how sometimes what you’re looking to find is not what you find. Particularly in our culture and our generation of women [the Sweats are all over 40], some of the ideas we were toying around with were what were the fairy tales we were promised? Can we do all these things and be artists and mommies?”

The Sweats happen to be fans of found objects and, to put it more bluntly, dumpster diving. “It becomes kind of the quest,” explained Sanders. “The quest and yearning and how quest can define us at different times in our lives. We can embrace it or we can suppress it.”

Now arriving at fairy tales and using that as the lens through which to view their own experiences, the Sweats set about finding their own stories and dealing with iconic objects and iconic characters. The broomstick, the golden egg, Rapunzel’s braid, the crone, the good mother, the princess—all these found a way into their personal stories.

Generally their writing process begins on a Monday night, when they meet to read to each other what they’ve got, talk about new ideas and vamp on some concepts. Once someone brings an idea to the group, “we jam on it,” said Nolan. “It has to become everyone’s idea.”

Webster added that they have writing exercises that help. “There are specific things we write to. Clare brought in little people in a diorama. I brought in smells… We set ourselves assignments.”

They wrote about the fairy tale icons, and Nolan pointed out, “We do a lot of writing to see what we will find before we hit on something that will be a ‘piece.’”

In talking about their collaborative process, Webster pointed out, “We all remind each other of things we’ve written and say, ‘Go back to that thing you wrote.’” Of course, then they have to figure out just where that particular bit of writing resides. Milne, in mock despair, said, “We all have piles of notebooks.”

Milne points out that they weren’t always this collaborative with each other. “Our first several shows were not the least bit collaborative. It was like, everybody write a monologue and we’re gonna do a show and write about whatever’s in your life. We still do shows like that—the stand and tell shows—but even those kind of shows we’ve started getting more involved in each other’s writing. That has evolved into work that is actually weaving our pieces together.”

Inevitably writers get stuck. It’s not a matter of “if,” but “when.” One key to the Sweats’ success in their more highly produced shows has been that they do not write the show until they have rented the space to perform it in. Milne explained, “Otherwise, we’ll never finish it. We’ll be stuck forever. It’s only when it’s gonna be more embarrassing to breach the contract… We got a nice little grant, and we could afford to rent a space now and so that’s why the show is being finished. Now we have to or we have to give back the money.”

Other than the threat of public humiliation, they also use the technique of automatic writing. Nolan explained, “You just keep writing. You think you have nothing and then your colleagues will notice, ‘That’s a kernel, build on that…’ You put a circle around it and go back to it.”

Webster added, “I will get calls from another Sweat—Clare will call and go, ‘You know what you had last night? Just go back. Sit down right now and write.’”

Milne laughed, “That’s why so many of our pieces are on cocktail napkins and bank receipts.”

Often the Sweats will do lengthy runs of their “stand and tell” type of show, where they will write a new piece each week. Not necessarily every person, but in the last run of a stand and tell show, Nolan had set herself a challenge to definitely write a new piece every week. “I wanted to see if I could do it while working and being a mom.” She succeeded, writing a new monologue every week of the nine month run.

They also utilize “improv writing,” in which Nolan explained you get a suggestion from the audience, you write on that during the show and then you present it at the end of the show. Audiences love it, although it is not something they will do for Sweatily.

Milne noted that “it was really good for us, though. It’s part of why we have stacks of material. Under that pressure, where you can’t screen anything ’cause if you go, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to write about that,’ then you just sit there and you’re frozen and you’ve got a blank page when it’s your turn.”

The Sweats are excited and a little nervous about this more legitimate run in a real theatre, as opposed to their usual one-off performances or months-long runs in the back of a bar. They have set, costume and lighting designers and are even working with a stage manager, who has created a prompt book with their writing. Milne laughed, “I’ve never seen anything like it for us. He’s actually making edits.”

For Sweatily, the ladies are working with classically trained composer and clarinetist Teri Foster, who has also hired a bass player to augment what in the past has been her one-woman band. The Sweats said that for this show, they have constructed their pieces with music in mind. “As you can imagine,” said Nolan, “when you are trying to be suggestive rather than concrete, this fits really well with the idea of fairy tales.”

Foster is as much a voice and a player in this show as the other Sweats. Although her relationship with the actors is still evolving, she came into the process by listening to the actors’ work and composing off of that.

Director Boyd is working with the Sweats for a second time, having first directed Cirque du Sweat a few years ago. Boyd’s style is heavily influenced by dance and movement, which is something relatively new to the Sweats, who tend to simply stand and talk. Milne noted, “Clare and Martie often have active pieces. Whenever we go to do one of our regular stand and tell shows, we always tell whoever is lighting us that Pamela and I need a light right here and we’re not gonna take one step out of it. And these two are running all over the stage doing things.”

Not so much for this show, as the Sweats embrace “the comedy of our movement skills,” according to Milne. “Choreographies,” laughed Sanders.

While the movement has so far informed the writing, they note that there is still more to be discovered. One of the images that they are working with (which has come to life) is a 125-foot Rapunzel braid that they wove themselves. Working with the braid and with movement, though, they have found that it takes away the need for text. “Movement teaches [us] about where I need to edit and cut a little bit,” said Webster, who also pointed out that Boyd has been great. “We write so much for a stand and tell performance that it is very guided. ‘He said, she said, I said, I screamed.’ Those things aren’t necessary once you get yourself up on your feet. You just can scream.”

The biggest evolution with this show is in using their colleagues as other characters or other elements in their stories, which is a relatively new concept for this group. Milne pointed out, “The rest of us are usually writing our improv piece.” They had played a bit with this in Cirque by having other Sweats be voices within the monologue, but Sweatily takes that concept ever further.

It is unusual for the Sweats to work with designers on one of their shows, and Milne said, “I think we’re most excited about our artistic partners. I think this is going to be an elevated experience for us and a really exciting thing for our audience.”

“We all have all these lives,” Nolan said, “and then we’ve recruited all these people with all these lives too. It’s like a rare opportunity. I’m just thrilled that we are actually going to get to this point and get to live in it for four weeks.”

Webster added, “One of the more exciting aspects of this is that everyone committed to this amount of time.”

“This is the first time we’re going to have a run with these production values,” said Sanders. “This is going to have a life and it’s going to evolve and be something very complete. Hopefully by when we open.”

Additional research assistance by Caroline O’Hare.