Do you ever wonder who you really are? Or how people see you?
“Cover Girl,” a one-woman performance presented by Malinda LaVelle’s Project Thrust and starring Emmaly Wiederholt, is tackling just that question.
LaVelle, who lived and worked in San Francisco for about seven years, moved to Durango almost two years ago and is a member of the 20Moons Dance Co., says the show was created during a residency at the Peñasco Theatre in Peñasco, New Mexico.
“‘Cover Girl’ deals a lot with the kind of internal landscape that reveals itself in the presence of external gratification,” LaVelle says. “So for artists and for anyone, that idea of being successful and climbing the ladder and these things, and what it does mentally. So “Cover Girl” became this idea of kind of an iconic representation of success.”
Told in four vignettes, the show explores that toll that the race for success takes.
“The piece deconstructs that so it looks at a lot of different facades that you put on, different ways you retell your own narrative, denial, trying to justify failure,” LaVelle says. “So ‘Cover Girl,’ like this nice external appearance and you turn the pages and more and more it becomes, ‘Hmmm ...’
“That felt also like that made sense with the title, ‘Cover Girl.’ And of course, it has that funny connection to the makeup brand, which is really kind of what it is: this face on a magazine.”
LaVelle says that even though the actress on stage is a woman, it’s not a female-only show. “While of course it has female undertones because I’m a female and so is she, regardless of gender, (everyone) can connect to something in it; it’s a pretty human thing, I think, the idea of rejection, wanting to be loved – those ideas.”
katie@durangoherald.com
If you go
What: “Cover Girl,” presented by Malinda LaVelle’s Project Thrust
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Where: Vallecito Room at Fort Lewis College.
Tickets: $15 suggested general admission, with a sliding scale of $10-$25. It is asked that people choose the ticket price that best represents their ability to pay. Seating is limited; advanced purchase recommended.
More information: Show is suitable for those 12 and older. www.projectthrust.com.