Wall( & Squawk

rom the promo shot, it's hard to_
tell if Hilary Ramsden plays the
role of a bubble-gum blowing se-
ductress or feral child dressed in
queen's clothing.
Leave the interpretations up to
Walk & Squawk Performance Project,
a nonprofit theater company founded
this year in southeastern Michigan by
metro Detroit's own Erika Block and
Hilary Ramsden from England.
The company's first show, They Do
It With Mirrors, is scheduled for its
Motor City debut Thursday, Dec. 7,
at the Players Club (about two miles
east of the Renaissance Center) on
East Jefferson Avenue in Detroit's
Rivertown. It runs through Sunday,
Dec. 10.
Described as "a madcap perfor-
mance about identity, illusion and rab-
bit stew," the show is more than a story
about magicians and a clever librari-
an. It's a one-woman presentation with
on-stage videos of Ramsden playing
different roles.
Ann Arbor video artist Terri Sar-
ris and Frank Pahl, who leads the De-
troit-based alternative band Only A
Mother, contributed to the overall,
multimedia effect.
"The story asks questions about re-
ality and illusion, what's real and
what's not, what's fact and what's fic-
tion," says Block. "Is identity some-
thing we create or something that just
is?"
Block and Ramsdem wrote the play
in 1993 and recently took it on the road
to Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts and
Vermont. They met in the 1980s at the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Brock had
written a well-received script, and

F

Ramsden landed a part in the London
production.
Block, 32, a native of Birmingham
and graduate of Andover High School,
says she and Ramsden see a market
for more theater in Detroit.
'Walk and Squawk aims to expand
the choices. We're hoping to fill a niche
that's somewhere between Broadway
musicals and community theater. Es-
sentially, we're a professional compa-
ny that's akin to what you'd see off
Broadway or off-off Broadway in New
York," she says.
Two sets of fund-raisers earlier this
year raised more than $17,000 for the
project. Block and Ramsden have a his-
tory of making imaginative, unpre-
dictable theater in the United States
and Great Britain.
Their work — which critics have
called "classy," "madcap" and "pro-
found" — is rooted in a European tra-
dition of physical comedy, visual
theater and performance art. It's in-
fluenced by everything from circus and
comedia dell'arte to Charlie Chaplin
and Laurie Anderson.
Performances of They Do It With
Mirrors begin at 8 p.m. Thursday
through Saturday, Dec. 7-9. On Sun-
day, Dec. 10, the show begins at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $15, with a $10 price for
students and seniors. Supervised park-
ing is available.
Thursday night's performance will
offer a pay-what-you-can admission
rate. A free concert by Only A Moth-
er follows the Friday-night show, and
Sunday's performance will be signed
for the hearing impaired. For more in-
formation, call Walk and Squawk Per-
formance Project at (313) 668-0407. ❑

Hilary Ramsden stars.

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friday, Dec 1

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Clockwork: American
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Aishet Hayil: A Woman of
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Walter Crane exhibit,
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Made in America: Ten Cen-
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