Lucky Plush Productions presents:
Unfinished Business
Created & Performed by Melinda Jean Myers and Kurt Chiang
October 20-22 @ 7:00pm
Live-stream available Oct 22 only
Links Hall, 3111 N Western Ave
Mindy and Kurt have always wanted something. They wanted to dance (Mindy), and to act (Kurt). Eventually, they got what they wanted, whether it was a role, a part, a job, a career, and so on. But it wasn’t what it seemed to be. What they wanted was different. Or it could be, or should be. What they wanted – from dancing, from acting – was changing all the time, from year to year, or from the time it took to walk across the room. In the meantime, they wound up here, in front of you, the audience.
Unfinished Business is a two-person dance and theater performance created while the artists lived in different cities. Mindy and Kurt exchanged voice memos, archiving a lively exchange of thoughts, opinions, knee-jerk reactions and free-wheeling associations. The memos serve as a soundscape in a show woven together with elements of dance, movement, theater and gesture. Stage actions derive from the show’s title – reaching for something out of reach, moving the body in ways it doesn’t move anymore, climbing ladders that lead to nowhere. Mindy and Kurt question their own trajectories, challenging each other along the way, in an attempt to create a moment with the audience that is honest and entirely present.
Unfinished Business was originally produced by the artists, premiering in the spring of 2022 at The Englert Theatre in Iowa City, and further developed through a residency at The Yard in Martha’s Vineyard with Lucky Plush Productions. It is made possible through seed support from Lucky Plush’s Embodied Research Program and the Performance Subvention Fund from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at University of Iowa.
