The truth is the truth is truth is the… A dance-theater retelling of the lives of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.
Presented as part of the Spark Theater’s New Play Festival 2025. The piece is choreographed, written, and directed by Hallie Chametzky and performed by and heavily influenced by contributions from Aviya Hernstadt and Aria Roach. It has an original score by Colton Dodd and dramaturgy is by Stephanie Saywell.
A figure appears in the half-light between the curtains. High heels and a sweater dress, short hair bobbed and curling chin-height. She—because it is the 1940s and we are given to understand gender by the height of the heels and the way hair curls chin-height—brings out a music stand, sets a desk in the corner, produces a sheaf of paper and organizes the pages. She sits, tucks her hair behind her ears, and begins to write. We are with her at the scene of writing; as the lights come up, a world is being made. Could this be the author? Who is Gertrude Stein?
When I was an English major in Iowa City, and perhaps earlier, in high school, I read Gertrude Stein’s impossible writing and found it to be as everyone had always described: impossible. More specifically, it was snarly, circular; repetitive, tautological. At its best, the odd prose-poetry had hard-won moments of clarity. More often, the words evaded their meanings and tripped over themselves in a flurry of willful confusion. Though I knew she was queer, and I was echolocating my own queerness, I couldn’t bring myself to care. Tale as old as time, perhaps; Gertrude Stein as punishing eccentric, a formidable and unlikeable classic.
But this is the truth at the surface. Chametzky’s work takes up the task of asking: who is Gertrude Stein?—as a person, a lover, a companion, a woman in time? An iterative stutter, “The truth is…” excavates the many truths of Stein’s life and assembles them in space, with bodies and living texts.
Two dancers appear, carrying an array of pedestrian props. Their clothes suggest historical period and identity via subtle details: a vest, a dress, a feathered hat, a white shirt left open at the neck. They speak to each other in terse nonsense phrases, chattering in a dense language not quite meant for our ears. They arrange their props in anthropomorphic towers as if recreating themselves in miniature or nonsensifying their likenesses. A huge roll of paper spools out over the stage and, writing within writing, the performers spell out a motto and hold it up so we see that this is
EVERYBODY’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY
“Who is Gertrude Stein?” Chametzky asks from the desk, shuffling her papers. The dancers begin moving and speaking. Hernstadt, as “the genius” Gertrude Stein, wears an enigmatic smile while making sweeping arm gestures punctuated by swift weight shifts. Roach, as Alice B. Toklas, “who is not an artist, but could be,” wafts her limbs around her torso with elegant precision and nods and squints decisively. Pedestrian tics and small, expressive gestures interject elegant lines and angles. As they move, they describe themselves, bringing each person to life with artful narrative details and weaving together their traits and the details of their interactions until another long paper signals a new chapter in which
COMPOSITION AS EXPLANATION
Source text enters the narration, shifting the focus from description to direct experience. Chametzky begins to read a passage from Stein’s actual writing. Hernstadt and Roach start a large phrase that traverses the space, Cunningham-like, in a muscular, disjointed syntax.
The movement vocabulary mirrors Stein’s rigorously playful prose. As the dancers wear out every repetition of the material, arcing and surging and panting across the space, the parallels become crystal clear. The satisfaction of watching two skilled performers tackle the toilsome, sweaty, and oddly joyful movement while the toilsome, sweaty, and oddly joyful text is read along with it closed the circuit for me. What I was missing from Stein’s text was the living element: the embodied effort in performance. And seeing Hernstadt and Roach throw themselves into shape after shape after shape, over and over and over, amplified the text to a point of tedious ecstasy until another banner brings the dancers out of the abstract to explain again the
WARS I HAVE SEEN
Becoming the interviewer once more, Chametzky furrows her brow and fires off a series of serious questions around faith and identity—forcing the two women to talk through their support of the fascist Vichy regime in France and their strange opinions about the politics of the era. These characters were not outside of history. However, Chametzky as the enquiring archivist derails the usual project of cancellation or reification to introduce nuance: sure, they were lesbians; sure, they were fascist apologists and Jewish-American expats; sure, they did what they needed to do to protect themselves so they could continue making art and existing together. This section leaves a necessary ambiguity hovering over Stein and Toklas, which remains as they pull the paper out one more time to write the tender slogan
LIFTING BELLY
Hernstadt and Roach then reprise the first phrases in a sweet duet, holding each others’ gaze and cradling each other into amorous lifts. A beautiful score by Colton Dodd fades in softly, a dreamlike accent to the strong, gentle choreography. Their chemistry and sensuous connection reinforces Stein and Toklas’ humanity. Together, they work and live and endure.
It seems as though Stein wanted to create a sort of dailiness with her writing: indicating that who you are is what you do. As it turns out, Stein and Toklas did many things, some of them frightening and problematic, some of them strenuous and beautiful—all of them a legacy worth digging into. Chametzky was wise to put this work onstage in 2025, as we face a resurgence of fascism and question our own moral codes in relation to the lives we lead, the folks we love, and the art we make.
Photos: Grace Kathryn Landefeld
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