Margin Notes: She Takes Flight

She Takes Flight

The cast of She Takes Flight. Photo by Charles Chessler.

Seen on: Friday, 5/16/25.

Plot and Background

Chrysalis Theatre Company presents the world premier of a devised theatrical piece written and performed by Sora Baek, Cindy Keiter, Gabriela Kohen, Adina Taubman, and Susan Ward, about, per the press release, "reaching middle age and not giving a f&*k."

What I Knew Beforehand

That it was a devised piece by five women about, in part, processing adulthood, middle age, and beyond.

Thoughts:

The stage is a workzone, with caution tape and warning signs. The stage is a playground, with toys and ribbons. The stage is a storage room, with piles of pillows and other forgotten detritus. The stage is a memory box, festooned with strings of photographs and crates of old keepsakes. The stage is a memorial, with the names of women dead due to restrictive anti-abortion laws, hand-drawn in careful, serifed font. The stage is a support group, with five wooden chairs waiting to be filled. The stage, as designed by Yi-Hsuan (Ant) Ma, is all of these and none of these, that glorious and liminal space to allow these five women to tell their stories, to be both here and now, and also many years ago and far away.

Their stories vary, exploring themes from childhood of sexual awakenings, fears of death, and complicated parental relationships, to adulthood, reckoning not only with being mothers themselves but with having to caretake for their elderly parents. Themes of gender identity, body image, body autonomy, sexual kinks and sexual assault, grief, and yes, boobs flavor the 100-minute piece, sometimes in individual monologues, sometimes pastiche scenes of menopause game shows or lady parts department stores. The work is at its most effective when the company finds a way to turn their memories into fugues: suites of caring for sick mothers, of dealing with body changes. Here they most delicately track the specificity and yet universal experiences that are simultaneously unique and shared among the five. It is fitting that toward the end, when each woman is summing up her experience, the chairs are grouped in a semicircle facing the audience: as if we, too, are part of the support group, helping each other heal through our traumas.

The work's title, She Takes Flight, is ultimately revealed to be a peaceful way to envision the passing of their mothers: the women who shaped them, who hurt them, who loved them, who left them. But that's not the only meaning. In exorcising so many demons, the hope is that each of these five women--Sora, Cindy, Gaby, Adina, Susan--will be free of the weights holding them down and will be able to fly as well, fly while they are still alive.

***

Running: Now playing at The Chain Theatre (Chrysalis Theatre Company) - Opening: May 15, 2025. Closing: June 8, 2025.
Category: play
Length: 1 hour, 40 minutes, no intermission.

Creative Team

Playwrights: Sora Baek, Cindy Keiter, Gaby Koen, Adina Taubman, Susan Ward.
Director: Kelly O'Donnell
Designers: Yi-Hsuan (Ant) Ma (Set), Izzy Fields (Costume), Kia Rogers (Lighting), Jeffrey Salerno (Sound), Chia-Yuan (Joanne) Chuang (Props), Fiona Hansen (Stage Manager), Xandra Abney (Co-Producer), Rachel Saruski (Associate Producer).
Cast: Sora Baek, Cindy Keiter, Gaby Koen, Adina Taubman, Susan Ward.

The cast of She Takes Flight. Photo by Charles Chessler.