SHOWINGS OF CREATIVE WORK
Smarter | Performance Works Northwest in Portland OR | April 18-20, 2025
An original solo performance
Smarter, a 20-minute solo show, follows the inner monologue of a woman who falls into the psychologically trippy hole that is the workplace. Through a sequence of intimate scenes—from toxic-polite performance reviews to sexual harassment—this show explores what it means to “perform” in a system that reduces people to tools, preys on desperation, and normalizes the fragmentation of the self. Combining humor, inner parts dialogue, and some absurd movement that involves a swivel chair, Smarter asks how far we are willing to go in capitalism, to “work smarter, not harder,” in a system that inevitably harms the most vulnerable and makes fools of us all.
“The large amount of energy Lauren held and played with in her body was captivating. The content was harrowingly relatable, funny, and freeing. I felt and remembered that psychic imprint of what it's like to be young and vulnerable like that, as well as the tendrils that are still in my adult body. Her face, body mechanics, delivery, radiating energy, prop work, and cadence of the script—all excellent.”
—Audience Member
Genesis Erased | FLOCK Dance Center in Portland, OR | April 17, 2024
A work-in-progress film + writing showing with FIELDWORK
In an eight-week artist and writer’s feedback group, I began working on an erasure poetry project that uses the book of Genesis as my found text. Since leaving the American Evangelical church, after being radicalized by Christianity in my teenage years, this project was a return to my textual, mythological, and linguistic roots. While the act of erasure is perhaps inherently violent, this project quickly turned into a humorous and tender rediscovery of a thing that I had loved and held so dearly, even as I struck through the text with my black Sharpie to reveal a new, sometimes transformative, sometimes silly, story underneath. At the showcase, I presented the first three chapters erased in a short film that voiced over the new, punctuated poem of Genesis, and braided this presentation with personal narrative. As the show began, I handed the audience my old worn, leather-bound Bible that belonged to me when I was sixteen, which they held, opened, and passed around to each other.