1812 Productions presents Jen Childs’s She Gets Around

Childs was a founder of 1812 Productions in 1997; at 57, in her new show, she’s talking casually about her life as if we’re at her home. Directed by Harriet Power, Childs dances lightly from rack to rack, sometimes with music, as she slips into a track suit, or a Girl Scout uniform, and plays herself at various ages.

The lives of comics

This is the third one-woman show Childs has done with Powers. Her first, Why I’m Scared of Dance, was a little more specific about the journey to comic actor from failed dancer. She Gets Around is broader in scope. Childs tells stories of teen conversations with her mother about sex, or discovering comedy, or her time in the Scouts, collecting a Merit Badge for doing her nails.

There are breaks from autobiography, but they serve as touchpoints for the artist’s career. She slips in a few updates on characters from her second solo show, I Will Not Go Gently, on the same stage 10 years ago. At one point, outfits of famous female comedians come out, and Childs does her impressions of each one; it’s one of the few incidents of straightforward standup in the show, and a nice moment both for pacing and a demonstration of Childs’s deft versatility (and a preview of her next solo show, Funny Girls, this summer in Cape May). But it’s also another step in her development, as she tells how each one of the women influenced her career.

Spontaneous elements

There’s a modest gesture toward improv and spontaneity, as part of the show’s setup is to pick a volunteer from the audience and let them choose which outfit goes in the next bit. The volunteer can only choose from four outfits, and in between there are five or six other sketches, so there’s not a lot of suspense. It does help the audience keep track of the time; it’s a 90-minute show with no intermission, and the format of short sketches can make it a little hard to track where the evening is headed without sneaking a look at your watch.

The banter with an audience member enhances the feeling of a casual chat in a closet (or attic, given the size). The first night, there was a moment when Childs finished a story about a rough time in her life, and turned to “Ellen” in the front row with a rhetorical question: “What was I supposed to do?” She seemed genuinely surprised and touched when the woman answered, “Love yourself.” Since there will be a new volunteer each night, this will play out differently each time.

Outfits go, memories stay

The set, by Nick Seymour, is racks of clothes, with a clothesline high up, reached by climbing a ladder. The clothes are presented as real items from the real closet, but it’s likely costume designer Ariel (Ludi) Wang reproduced some of the originals, and created others; either way, it’s a lot. The music selections by sound designer Chris Collucci evoke the decades, and the move from long-ago family car rides in the Midwest to the stage at Plays and Players. Childs’s memory of dance steps from her 20s is jogged along by Melanie Cotton’s choreography.

As each reminisce ends, Childs takes off the outfit. Some of them go in a wicker laundry basket, some on the floor, some back on hangers or the clothesline. She might dump some of these outfits, but not the memories that go with them.

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