Drop Dead…Gorgeous is a ninety-minute multimedia performance about the female body: its weight, its age, its physical appearance. Tamar Rogoff, the production’s writer, director, and choreographer, writes in the program that she “loved [her] dancing body until it danced into adolescence and criticism from dance teachers landed deep, and I never fully recovered the innocence of my early childhood positivity.” 65 years later, she’s created a show that is obviously personal yet often eludes clear statements about its subject matter. While clearly full of feeling, so much of its effect is elusive. What is Drop Dead…Gorgeous ultimately saying?
Structured in two parts followed by a coda, the theatrical first half of Drop Dead opens on the set of “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” a dystopian live television game show. Three contestants suffer a series of public indignities related to their physical appearance in an attempt to win “the perfect body,” though how this will happen is never quite clear. The host (Gardiner Comfort) introduces the show’s participants, all of whom are women. One with curves (Shaena Kate) wants to lose sixty pounds and grow five inches; an older woman (Gina Bonati) seeks to become forty years younger; and the slender and petite returning champion (Gerlanda Di Stefano) wishes to lose thirty pounds.
In the world of Drop Dead, bodies are objects, and women’s personalities are reduced to superficial metrics. During the entire performance, women never speak (except for a very brief moment at the very end, and only Di Stefano). Is Rogoff inferring that women have no agency, possess no power? That the entirety of the problem (and thus the solution) surrounding body image and eating disorders rests solely within the hands of men? If so, the point feels unfulfilling. The potential for nuance on this important topic is reduced to oversimplified binaries.
Wearing a sparkling blazer, Comfort does all of the talking as Gimme’s host, working hard to infuse a quasi-manic energy into each of the show’s cruel games. During Firing Squad, he “shoots” insults at the women (“You’re ugly! You’re fat!”); in The Naked Truth, contestants are forced to undress. Contestant #1 (Kate) sobs as the host demands she begin disrobing in front of the audience. Knowing the name of these games in advance strips the spectacle of its potential dramatic impact. With rules that are often evaded or illogical, this section of Drop Dead is confusing. After enduring insults about her aging body, for example, why does contestant #3 (Bonati) walk away, seemingly without consequence? Did she win or lose? Later, when she stands protectively in front of Kate (now in her underwear), Comfort rushes to shield the eyes of contestant #2 (Di Stefano) from this image; the host silently mouths words to her and to the audience, but we cannot tell what he is saying. Are we supposed to know?
Eating disorders, body dysmorphia, and self-harm are potent themes for art-making. In recent years, mainstream culture has learned about new connections between these topics and social media, class, and gender. In Drop Dead…Gorgeous, Rogoff gestures to these subjects with sincerity, without digging too deeply into them, resulting in the reinforcement of familiar tropes rather than revelation. Why use the retro concept of a game show rather than opting for contemporary forms of media like TikTok? What if “Gimme”‘s host was played by a woman, instead of a man? Why are there no male contestants on this show? Why must the curvy contestant cry during The Naked Truth? Why don’t the women ever speak for themselves?
For me, the clearest and most textured statements about women’s bodies occur when the play becomes a dance. After a sudden and unexplained flood, depicted on video monitors, the second half of Drop Dead…Gorgeous is nearly all modern dance choreography. Rogoff provides an extended opportunity to really see these three women for the first time, dancing freely, interacting with one another, utterly comfortable in their own skin. Bonati and Kate engage in a number of beautiful duets together, their poses evoking something utopic: a sensual world of depth where women can celebrate their individual attributes beyond mere height and weight. The two move playfully, luxuriously; they display strength, confidence, and power, and embody a genuine beauty.
When Di Stefano joins them later, the trio moves in unison, inviting us to contemplate their bodily differences, as well as where they connect physically. The abstract nature of this dancing portion of Drop Dead…Gorgeous proved immensely effective in investigating complexity and new shades within the themes, making the earlier moments with dialogue feel like an oversimplification, a slip into confirmation bias. Will all of the dancing women stay on their island of feminine paradise? Or will they return to the commodified world of “Gimme Gimme Gimme”?
I respect Rogoff’s skills as a multifaceted creator as well as her valiant ambitions to share the feelings she has had about her body spanning decades. Drop Dead…Gorgeous works best when the material aims for images beyond (just) the personal. I liked the piece the most when the audience had room to linger with the questions, before being driven to arrive at the same conclusions. Let social media posts or opinion articles in the paper give us “answers” to challenging subjects. Let dance or theater (or both) instead give us time to look at our contradictory selves.
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