Shimmy Shimmy Productions Shimmies Its Way to Santa Barbara

From Miami to N.Y.C. to L.A., local dance and theater artist Kerrilee Gore has worked in entertainment in the country’s boldest, most innovative artistic centers. Now the Creative Director of Santa Barbara–based theater company Shimmy Shimmy Productions, Gore and her creative team aim to bring that edgy, original performance art to town for those who crave “eccentric, avant-garde, underground theater.” Shows featuring the work of regional artists, and original performances by Gore and Shimmy Shimmy, will take the stage in Gore’s intimate Black Box Theatre, which she calls “a secret underground theater” with a “secret underground show series.”

“I’m attracted to dark, unsettling, underground,” Gore says of her creative process. “I interpret music with story as soon as I hear a song that touches me or excites me or makes me uncomfortable. And I create a vignette in my head.” 

To experience this moodier vibe, see Gore’s notable performance work, When the Lights Go Out, presented by Shimmy Shimmy October 3-6. Instead of driving to San Francisco or L.A. for a multimedia, dance-based aerial plus burlesque theater piece with a satisfying, disorienting atmosphere and a throb of intensity and desire, you can experience When the Lights Go Out here in town. (Need more convincing that this show is weird and wild and well worth seeing? An aerial artist performs while suspended from her hair!)When the Lights Go Out has toured for the last 10 years (I saw it in 2022) with the same cast of artists. “The show is all the ways the lights can go out in a person’s life,” says Gore. “Through the last decade, the show has grown, evolved, changed; this is the very last time the original format will play before I restructure the show. It’s exciting, but bittersweet — we’re surrounded by the most talented cast members, aerialists, dancers — it’s like a family.”

Moving forward in the Black Box, Lights will be restructured for a smaller space and adapted to a new kind of venue and performance schedule.

Other excitement planned for Shimmy Shimmy’s season are productions such as Mütter and Guilty Pleasures, recurring shows that can maintain format while being customized to serve various themes for a completely new performance each time. Mütter is a cabaret-eque act with professional performers, also mothers, who perform solos in their chosen artistic style. “Singers, dancers, artists,” says Gore, “Maybe someone will make a sculpture throughout the show.” Guilty Pleasures is a lip-sync extravaganza somewhere between karaoke and a music video. Participants are given a costume and background dancers with full choreo — their job is to lip sync for their life.

Beyond Shimmy Shimmy–created productions and potential shows imported from L.A., Gore hopes the Black Box can become a home for experimental-leaning artists, as well as other independent local work, such as playwright Kieron Barry’s upcoming original production of Spy for Spy. “Original works,” says Gore, “is what the Black Box should represent.” For a taste of that beguiling and exciting underground art scene, follow Shimmy Shimmy Productions for something new!

For more information, see whenthelightsgooutshow.com, and shimmyshimmyproductions.com.