'Soft Goods' turns dance spotlight backstage

It's a point of professional pride that theatrical backstage staff are never seen. According to choreographer and sought-after stage technician Karen Sherman, that can be unhealthy. Her new show "Soft Goods," opening this week in Minneapolis, shines a light backstage.

Technicians and dancers mill around the stage of the Maguire Theater at the Walker Art Center. There's no scenery. On one side of the stage, the complex system of ropes and pulleys for raising and lowering lighting rigs is fully exposed. A group of stage hands is setting up counterweights for heavy spots. Following safety protocol, they call back and forth.

"Is the rail clear?" calls someone off stage.

The crew members all step back.

"The rail is clear!" they chorus.

"Loading!" comes the response, followed by a series of jarring bangs as weights slide into place.

It's the kind of stuff you never see in a performance. But that's what this is. Karen Sherman has choreographed these moves. It's a dance.

"It's not dance in any way that anybody might expect," she said. "And I think of this particular project as more like a dance/play/exhibition of manual labor."

As the rehearsal progresses, we see dancers arrive. Stage technicians build the lighting rigs and create the effects that will elevate the dancers' already remarkable skills. We hear the dancers talk, and swear, as they refine their performances. Sherman moves among them all, giving direction, asking questions and molding the show.

Sherman took a circuitous route to this show. She started off studying acting at NYU.

"And I was friends with a lot of dancers just through happenstance," she said. "And they started asking me to be in their shows as the non-dancer, and I kept saying yes, and I said yes for 20 years."

In time she became known as a dancer and a choreographer. But she also needed to pay her bills.

"The stage production work just sort of ... " Sherman paused, looking for the right way to describe it. "Anything to make a dollar, I suppose. So it was sort of my day job, off and on, for the last 20 to 25 years."

And she got very good at it, working all over the place, including at the Walker. This puts Karen Sherman in the very small group of people who are both top-flight performers and top-flight stagehands. Philip Bither, the Walker's performing arts senior curator, said that while performers and stagehands work together, they rarely intermingle.

"And I think it's often led to misunderstanding and even great tension between the worlds of the people who are helping put on the show technically and the people who are performing in it," he said.

This was something Sherman wanted to explore in "Soft Goods," which the Walker co-commissioned. But her main impetus was darker. A few years ago, two stage technicians she knew as friends died suddenly.

"One died from suicide and one died from alcoholism," she said. "But their deaths weren't discovered right away. That's what really stood out to me."

Suicide and addiction are problems everywhere, but it struck Sherman that working backstage can exacerbate the issues. She said it's a profession dedicated to self-erasure.

"As a stagehand you sit in the dark for many, many, many long hours," she explained. "You wear black all the time, like you are perpetually at a funeral. You are not supposed to be seen. You are not supposed to be heard. Your skill set can sometimes resemble your suffering, your isolation."

As she began working on the show, she heard more stories of stagehands who just disappeared. Then the lighting designer on the production itself died suddenly. Sherman said it was hard.

The Walker's Philip Bither said "Soft Goods" is an homage to the stage technicians who have died. Part of the ticket revenue will be donated to the new Behind the Scenes Counseling Fund to help pay therapy bills.

Sherman said this is a different kind of show, and will be a different kind of audience experience.

"I think the show is very funny and very moving," she said. "I described it the other day as being weirdly uplifting, even through it has been fraught with so much pain."

After premiering at the Walker, "Soft Goods" tours nationally, including to New York. There it will be the opening show in the newly renovated PS122 space.