Open for Experimentation

In 2014, dancers Erica Badgely and Britta Peterson approached then head of Velocity Dance Center, Tonya Lockyer, with an idea. They wanted to host an open mic space for live performance, and with Velocity offering up a 10pm slot on Monday nights, Sh*t Gold was born. A rotating group of hosts and organizers passed the Sh*t Gold baton for the following six years, including Alisa Popova, Ben Gooseman, and Frances Wolfe organizing in its later years. The vibes and the types of artists that came through were constantly in flux. I remember going to some of those early day Sh*t Gold performances–magical moments became the seeds of ideas we would see develop further along in artists’ journeys. I remember Keyes Wiley in the most tender slow dance with a lamp. Lorraine Lau dancing from behind the brim of a large red hat. And also some of the most random and strange things I’ve seen onstage. I remember someone talking for five minutes straight about their athlete’s foot shame while walking barefoot around the stage, to then pull a raw duck from their bag and ask the audience for money so that they could go across the street to get the duck cooked.

In 2020, the pandemic caused Velocity to lose its building, and after its long run, Sh*t Gold was laid to rest. Fast forward to the summer of 2022, when Alisa Popova and Erica Badgely felt the need for a similar type of space to come back, and Sh*t Gold was reborn as Short Shorts. 

In its regular format, Short Shorts is a monthly open stage for all performance genres, now hosted at SOAP (Seattle Open Arts Place, formerly 18th & Union). Think of it like an open mic for any performance form. You come to the event, sign up, and then “the stage is yours” to perform in whatever way you’d like for a timed 5 minutes. The only rules? “Don’t harm yourself, others, or the space.” The rest is up to you. As articulated in the program “We value serious playful and playfully serious artistic investigation in a low-stakes environment.” 

Ever-evolving to meet the desires of the community, Short Short created Jumpsuit: an event where performers can test out pieces up to 20 minutes in length, along with improvised lighting design by Ricardo Solis to elevate and support the curated performances. I attended the September 16th show, which featured four pieces and some of the variety you might expect at a multi-disciplinary experimental performance night, though unfortunately did not include Pooja Ganesh’s Kathak and Eve Salonens’ Tatkaar y Taconeo: Steps of Two Worlds, which performed in the same lineup the previous week and featured Flamenco and Indian dance in a cross-cultural conversation.

First up, the duo Now That We’re Alone performs To Speak In Absolutes: Fifteen Variations, with live sound by Sam Kash and movement by Birdy Adler. The lights flash on abruptly from blackout, punctuated by high-volume droning dissonant sounds, and Adler stands with their palms outstretched and quivering. Blackout. Repeat. Every new repetition introduces a new movement, as Adler’s body bends and crumples, with elongated extension and oscillating spasms. In the seemingly neverending loop of blackouts and repeated phrasework, my mind drifts to the feeling of being stuck in a loop of waking up to the unbearable atrocities that we are complicit in and that we often feel powerless to address in our daily lives. When a piece takes us somewhere real and heavy in performance, I want to know why we are being taken there, or what we can learn from this state. And unlike the piece, which ended after fifteen rounds, these horrific days just keep going. Of course, the point of Short Shorts is not always to arrive with completed ideas, but to use performance as process, so I am curious to see how this piece develops to clarify its intention and how we end the unending cycles.

Completely different in tone, but still utilizing the mundanity of repetitive loops, Overheard is a scripted theatre experiment where Darby Sherwood hands out printed scripts and invited the audience to perform scenes satirizing cycles of the positive morale non-profit machine, where employees are expected to be efficient and expendable. We wander between scenes: in the lobby a mock HR fires an employee, in the bar two co-workers vent about the work environment, and onstage the CEO attempts a down-to-earth pep talk. 

SOAP is a lovely venue for intimate performance. With its raked seats, and narrow stage, you feel really close to the performers. Performer Sabine took advantage of this to connect with the audience in Professional Pleaser. Eyelashes batting and with eyebrows raised, Sabine enters in clown makeup, pleaser heels, a tiny lingerie set, a coat and little else. They show a little cheek and wait for the audience response. Hinting at an upset stomach, Sabine surprises us all by pulling out hippo puppets lipsyncing to early 2000s club anthem “Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado & Timbaland. This piece reminds me of a standup comedian trying out new material. It is so hard to anticipate what an audience will find funny, or how to create a clear invite that tells a quiet Seattle crowd that hooting and hollering is encouraged. This piece is clearly in its early stages, full of gems to be further polished, and that is the very point of Short Shorts and Jumpsuit. 

Experimental pieces like these are hard to develop without performance workshop or to write about in proposals without proof of concept. Similarly, ILVS STRAUSS workshops the sequel scene to ñ (enye), which appeared this past June at Northwest New Works. The original piece featured a song, a rabbit, and a story of a high-fidelity listening experience. At the Jumpsuit showing, Strauss expanded work to continue the conversation between personified letters ñ and n, their text projected in Spanish and English in two columns across the screen, the rabbit now present only as a mask on stage. 

I’ve lived in Seattle long enough to have those “Remember when…” moments–the art spaces, performances, community members, and memories that have come and gone over the years. It can feel like nostalgia only exists in a space of grief, the loss of magical places. But here, sitting at Jumpsuit, as Strauss asks us to close our eyes to listen to the music, I’m reminded of a Sh*t Gold back in 2017, when she asked an audience member to sit down in a chair onstage. I came onstage and closed my eyes while she told a story performed with sonic foley. My eyes open from the memory and I find myself back in the room, Strauss describing the experience of a scuba diver surfacing, and the magic is still here–different place, different time, but the traces and echoes remain.

If you’re interested in coming to Short Shorts, they are always looking for more performers and audience members. Follow them on Insta @short__shorts__ or just show up at SOAP. They are taking a break in October! but will be back every second Tuesday of the month starting back up on November 11th, with 7pm doors and 7:30 show.

Jumpsuit by Short Shorts ran at SOAP – Seattle Open Arts Place Tuesday September 9 and 16, 2025. The program can be found HERE.