Burning Brothels: Sex and Death in Nevada: Educational & Engaging

Burning Brothels: Sex and Death in Nevada was educational and engaging, but more like a really good lecture than a dramatic play.

This piece may have a bit of an identity crisis. The listing made it seem like a character driven piece: stories of prostitutes through the ages. But my experience was more like watching a really, really good presentation with some dramatic elements. The kind that I always aspired to when given creative license for the aural exam in high school, but never really achieved myself. And in that context, I was very impressed.

If I think of Burning Brothels as a play, I want to get into the nitty gritty of what worked and what didn't. I want to point out inconsistencies with artifice like a costume change indicating a character switch and then just staying on through the next 3 switches. Sometimes the time indicator would change for no obvious reason. My brain kept grinding gears as my eyes and ears argued amongst themselves.

And the scene changes left something to be desired. This was the area where I really struggled with “play” versus “presentation”. In a play if a performer takes a “time out” during a scene change to turns their back on me to take a drink of water while some music plays and they pretend I'm not there for a few seconds, I'm going to be heavily inclined to pretend they aren't there when they turn around again to resume the performance. In a lecture, however, taking a break to regroup is perfectly acceptable behaviour. A formal change of scene or costume in such a casual venue (Origins Organic Coffee) is really unnecessary. I appreciate the use of artifice, but less artifice, used more efficiently, would have made the piece stronger.

All this analysis seems irrelevant though. Burning Brothels is an informative, educational piece. It's not about character development. It's about sharing some really interesting historical facts in a very engaging and charming manner. And that Katherine Glover did very well.

As an interactive presentation on the historical highlights of prostitution in Nevada, this piece was fabulous. I loved that Glover impersonated the characters, and managed to keep them all distinct too. (Well it got a little bit muddy at the end with the last guy, but other than that, really commendable.) And her style of speech is clever and engaging. I felt a tiny bit like I was watching a children's theatre performer teach a sex ed class, but that was all part of her charm.

One thing that I would have liked to see, regardless of the production's intention is a narrator character. It felt like Glover was vacillating between being herself chatting about her research and being an amplified “performer” version of herself. The result was too much in “public speaking mode” to be truly authentic, but not comfortable enough to keep a conversational rapport going. Defining a more clear “journalist narrator character” would really help to draw that line between art and life and it'll save you from those moments of self-consciousness when you realize there's a room of people staring at you.

All in all, I was thoroughly entertained and I did learn a few things about a rather interesting subject. Intellectually I was 100% with Glover. Emotionally, I wanted some dramatic conflict.