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Live Girls! Not a Strip Club
by Ellen Hastings

Perhaps you’ve seen the A-board nonchalantly sitting out on the sidewalk just past Great Harvest on Market Street in Ballard. “Live Girls!” it boldly pronounces. “Yikes!” your brain responds, not really sure what to make of it. You see a simple steel-rimmed door that leads down a narrow staircase to the basement of the trendy street-level shops. It’s stark. It doesn’t look like a door to a business. “Is this good? Is this legal? What is this?”

It turns out that Live Girls! is a theater dedicated to producing and developing new works by women. It’s working on a small budget so its commercial presentation is modest, but its activities are very legal, (even encouraged!) and its mission is very good. Indeed, its main goal is to expose people to the diversity of ideas women explore and to expand the roles offered to them. The theater provides a place for local writers, actors and directors to grow in their craft, and also hosts some of the up-and-coming female playwrights from the national scene.

Meghan Arnette, director of development, founded the company in 1999 soon after graduating from Cornish College for the Performing Arts on Capitol Hill with a BFA in acting. She was disappointed by how few women playwrights she was exposed to in her theater education and doesn’t recall performing in one play written by a woman during those years. Going to auditions after graduating, she was further frustrated by the lack of character diversity available in the roles offered to women her age. There was nothing for a large, intense woman.

“When you’re in your 20s, you’re an ingénue,” Arnette states flatly, and then adds “…or else a whore.” She was told there would be roles for her when she was older. Like her current type didn’t exist. “It’s not how people are!” exclaims Arnette. She soon connected with her playwriting friend Kelleen Greenfield who created some strong, unusual and wacky roles for her, and Live Girls! was launched. They produced four plays that first year in four different rental theaters.

Live Girls! director of development is Zoe Fitzgerald, who also came from an acting background, having studied at Emerson College in Boston. She too was frustrated by the types of roles available to women. Youthful in appearance, she was often cast as a child or young person. “I felt kind of stuck … so I started to write roles for women.” A play she submitted to Live Girls! was produced in 2001. She soon became deeply involved in the company and now feels that “Being able to choose the work and choose the play became more important to me than actually acting.”

It was in 2002 that Live Girls! stopped roaming and settled into a space in Pioneer Square. The space was only 800 square feet, but it was affordable. “The earthquake had happened and the riots had happened and nobody wanted to rent space so… they were happy to make a deal for us,” explains Arnette. Fitzgerald expands on the importance of that move. “Readings of new plays every month (and) developing new work is something you can’t really afford to do if you don’t have your own space.” But affordability had its trade-offs, and the danger of entering the old building nestled under the viaduct with falling traffic cones and cement debris became more of a risk than they wanted to bear. By 2005 they knew it was time to move out and they were ready to move up.

“It felt like to get to the next level … we needed to be in a building that felt more stable and…more like a neighborhood community,” says Arnette. They found what they were looking for in a basement in the heart of Ballard. Arnette has been pleased with the pedestrian action Market Street offers, the good mix of people and businesses old and new. “It’s been pretty awesome.” Fitzgerald counters, “Sort of scary at the same time…” and Arnette agrees that “nobody knew who we were and then people are like ‘Oh! There’s a strip club down there.’”

While attending “The Bakery,” the theater’s recent production of staged readings, I am first struck by the ticket price: $5. And anyone under 18 is free! Now this is affordable theater. Granted, these are staged readings; full production ticket prices range from $7 to $15. Arnette welcomes the audience to the show, mentions that more than half are attending Live Girls! for the first time, and then assures them not to worry because “this is not a porn show.” We are all sitting on a pleasant mix of traditional theater seats and couches draped in red. The stage is nothing but the bare black room in front of us with all the walls, plumbing and industrial venting exposed, and a lone door with a green illuminated exit sign above it. There are chairs set at an angle across the corner of the room with a music stand in front of each. This is the birthing of a play. It has never been heard before, not even by the playwright. Actors come out, introduce themselves and the characters they will be reading, and we all settle in to listen.

When the first reading ends, the actors take seats among the audience and we meet the playwright; she is 17. We are invited to give her feedback, tell her what really touched us or what didn’t work so well. The actors also give feedback. Everyone likes her characters. She is told she has the basis for a much bigger play. She is delighted. The second reading of the night is with a more experienced playwright who takes us back to the time of the Dust Bowl. It is an interesting piece. The playwright seems more interested in knowing what didn’t work than what did. There is discussion on how the sound cues for the wind and storm in a full production would really enhance the atmosphere of the play. It is a comfortable interaction, like we’re all part of the playwriting team.

When you attend a Live Girls! performance, “Expect to be in an atmosphere where women feel really empowered and strong,” declares Fitzgerald. “I think people (can) expect to be both challenged and entertained while they’re here… and to be surprised by new perspectives on things,” adds Arnette.

And like many women-run enterprises, it is a labor of love. The staff of this nonprofit is all-volunteer. Fourteen men and women make up the company, and everyone has paid jobs elsewhere. Arnette works two. She says that when she was heading to her day job recently, she called her husband and said, “I just have to say that right now I am so tired and I am so stressed out, and I am completely in love with my life. I just wanted to say that.”

Ellen Hastings is a local writer, real estate agent and business woman.

©2007 Caliope Publishing Company