A Theatrical Perspective

Kali Quinn ’03 likes to tell visceral stories that make her audience feel and think and respond. Take Vamping, the actor and director’s story of Julia, a 91-year-old woman struggling with senile dementia.

In the play, Quinn portrays five different characters as Julia, who reaches back into her failing memory to meet up with childhood friends, family members, and others. The performance includes video montage of the aging Julia that allows the audience to go back and forth in time.

GUT WRENCHING: Kali Quinn ’03 (center), one of the founders of the performance group GUTWorks says she likes to “tell stories that can change perspectives in a second.” Her performance in Vamping, tells the story of 91-year-old woman struggling with dementia. (Photo: Courtesy GUTWorks)

Performed at PS 122 in Manhattan as well as at the University, Vamping is an example of the kinds of work and the types of approaches to performance that Quinn and her fellow cofounders of the New York City-based company GUTWorks are committed to creating: relevant theatrical pieces for the 21st century.

“In theater, you can open people’s eyes,” says Quinn, who majored in English with a theater concentration. “I like to tell stories in a way that can change perspectives in a second.”

Quinn, who founded GUTWorks in 2006 with Jonathan Maloney and Daniel Burmeister, also teaches theater. In 2006, she taught in Brazil for three months and this summer she taught teens at the Putney School in Putney, Vt.

After graduating from Rochester, Quinn studied at Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, Calif. The school teaches fledgling actors that they shouldn’t wait for work to come to them, but should create their own work for the stage.

Doing so takes, time, energy, and money. So the GUTWorks trio develops new works, and handles the business end of a performing arts organization, all while working day jobs to pay the rent. Quinn recalls the time crunch they faced earlier this year when rehearsing the North American premiere of No Man’s Island, an Australian play set in a dismal prison. At the time, Quinn was working on a temp job for a public relations firm.

“For six weeks, we’d meet at 7 o’clock at night after a day of work, and know that we were just beginning the best part of our days,” says Quinn. “But the challenge was finding the energy for six hours of rehearsal. We knew we just needed to get it together.”

—David McKay Wilson