Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble Returns to the Stage
Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble (CDE) is proud to announce its return to the stage and kick of its two-year 20th Anniversary retrospective season with a live remount of its September 2003 production of "The Yellow Wallpaper," choreographed and Directed by Executive Artistic Director Ellyzabeth Adler with the cast. This show will be performed on a split bill with RE|dance Group's "The Attic Room," choreographed by Michael Estanich.
Based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman's gripping 1890 short story, this new interpretation will be positioned as a tale of a 2021 post-pandemic landscape. When one woman in the throes of postpartum depression also battles with her own rapidly vanishing sanity, her physician husband gives her the "rest cure." As she retires to her bedroom, she becomes hypnotically fixated on the yellow wallpaper patterns that eventually take on the forms of other trapped women. These women reflect her depression and confinement through both monologues and modern dance as she hypnotically follows the patterns in the paper. The familiar feeling of mental and physical isolation will leave audiences embracing the freedom of a world still reeling from the effects of COVID-19.
Executive Artistic Director Adler wanted to remount this production of "The Yellow Wallpaper" to open the 20th anniversary retrospective season, which will be celebrated through 2022, as a response to the global pandemic. "After a year of shelter in place, many people feel they are similar to these women in the yellow wallpaper, longing for connection and community. Being a single mother by choice, I had my support system in place to help me through the first several months of my daughter's life," said Adler. "When shelter in place happened, my baby was two weeks old. I saw only my doula for six weeks. In the middle of the night, when my baby would cry, I would walk around my house feeling trapped yet scared to go outside because of COVID-19. One day, staring hopelessly at my bookshelf, I saw a copy of "The Yellow Wallpaper." I realized I was living this book. Our world is living this book. My hope through remounting this production with a new understanding is to offer a communal grieving for this last year, but also to build collective understanding and healing."