The Search for and Realization of Freedom
First performed last October in an evening of solo performances with Susana Guillaume (“Living Latin” and “Girl Facing West), Michelle (Baker) Vest’s “Sole Survivors” will return for one evening only on March 29, 2008, at the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) at 8 P.M. Curated by CCA, “Sole Survivors” will be performed as part of their Oscillate series. Tickets may be purchased at the CCA Box Office at 505-982-1338 for $12 ($6 for CCA members).
“Sole Survivors” is Michelle’s first play and was nurtured and brought to the stage by teacher and performer Tanya Taylor Rubenstein, who is also the director of this performance. Michelle took Ms. Rubenstein’s one-year solo performance workshop in 2006 and opened “Sole Survivors” in October of 2007 at the Armory for the Arts. Michelle has continued her collaboration with Tanya Rubenstein as a co-facilitator on the “Queer Monologues” and as a teacher of improvisation and authentic movement in her mentor’s school for the performing arts.
Michelle Vest’s “Sole Survivors” is a “contemporary portrait of one American woman and three immigrants who put their lives on the line to seek—and realize—not only the American Dream, but their own, more personal and deeply-felt dreams of freedom.” Drawn from “actual experiences and my interpersonal relationships,” Michelle treats all the ups and downs of life with “Chaplinesque humor and pathos.” Avoiding stereotypes and cultural givens, Michelle “explores the far more enlivening truths that exist there (beneath the surface of our lives)” www.mbgm.com.
A talented painter, dancer, performance artist, and commercial photographer, Michelle Vest is also a humble individual whose primary goal is “to inspire others to find, cultivate and express their truths creatively and in a way that leads to personal and spiritual freedom.” (www.mbgm.com/bioresume.html).
