Bricolage theater stages 'Chicks ... Bad Girls on Bikes Doing Bad Things'

Thursday, October 30, 2008

After a season of reading plays filled with serious social commentary, Bricolage is in the mood for fun and laughter.

Beginning Friday night, the theater company will offer a fully staged production of Trista Baldwin's bawdy satire "Chicks ... Bad Girls on Bikes Doing Bad Things."

It's a play about hot girls riding bikes, kicking butts and wanting to rule the roads, says its director, Tami Dixon, who also serves as Bricolage's producing artistic director.

"It's about taking charge of our own bodies, not laying back and being submissive but taking the offensive," Dixon explains. "It says we don't have to be defined by the limited place we've been confined to for so long."

A parody of 1960s B-movies, the play centers around a prom queen runner-up who accidentally kills her sex-shy boyfriend and ends up on the road with an all-girl biker gang.

In addition to tongue-in-cheek humor and satire, the play offers plenty of opportunities for hair pulling, go-go dancing, mud wrestling and kung fu fighting.

The violence and mayhem is used to make a point, Dixon says.

"It says, is this the right way to go about it -- playing into the roles we are given?"

Those who follow Bricolage will recall that "Chicks ..." was immensely popular when the script was first performed as a seated reading in June 2006.

For this more fully staged show, Dixon has re-assembled all but one of Bricolage's original reading cast, including two who are now pregnant.

To some, the idea of pregnant biker chicks might seem a little odd. Dixon feels otherwise.

"This play is about celebrating who you are. If you are pregnant, why can't you be a biker chick?" she asks rhetorically.

Previous attendees or those who have seen posters around town might recognize that the play's title used in this story has been abridged to remove a phrase that might offend.

Its inflammatory potential is deliberate, Dixon says.

"It is very much on purpose -- to wake up and shake up," she says. "It's wake up and be present to all these nasty things in the world (such as ) war and genocide."

The play also can inspire, says Dixon, who performed in the original New York production in 2003.

"The experience changed my life. I learned how to love women. The group of women involved in that show about feminine empowerment taught me how to be a powerful woman in front of other powerful women without being angry," she explains.

The Bricolage production will be performed as part of its new Midnight Radio initiative, where scripts are performed as though for radio audiences in the 1930s and '40s.

Performers will speak their lines facing the audience and use stylized movements for fight scenes and other character interactions. They will be backed up by vintage sound-effect devices such as wind machines.

"It's a cross between 'Prairie Home Companion' and 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show,' with audience participation and a live rock band," Dixon says.

It's the company's first foray into what they hope will evolve into four radio-style serials that progress from episode to episode.

At present, Bricolage's core audience is older theatergoers. The company wants to attract more 20- to 30-year-olds and get them in the habit of going to theater.

"We want to build four serials to give a hip, young, turning-point audience an alternative to another night of sitting at a bar," Dixon says. "Our dream for 'Chicks' and all Midnight Radio shows is how to grow and evolve it like 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show,' where the audience can speak up and get rid of the fourth wall, scream, shout and be vocal."

To further its goal of attracting younger, hipper people, Bricolage is prefacing each performance with a happy (half) hour that begins at 9:30 p.m.

Live bands such as Motorpsychos, Soma Mestizo and Blindsider will play music, and liquor and snacks will be sold before the play's 10 p.m. start time.

"Most young people don't start their evening until the midnight hour, and we wanted to give this hip crowd ample time to put on their faces," Dixon says.

But she doesn't want to discourage other, older theatergoers from attending.

"This is for anyone who likes to laugh," she says. And if that laughter causes them to lose control of themselves, that's fine by her.

"If we have to pass out diapers before the show, that's OK by me," she says. "They're going to get a show that people are talking about."

Alice T. Carter can be reached at acarter@tribweb.com or 412-320-7808.