Trash Club was born when writer/performer Elaine Gale found herself newly single and freshly unpacked in a new town — in February 2020. Before she could reorient herself, the pandemic hit, prohibiting the authentic flow of naturalizing to a new environment.
“Suddenly, my life went off a cliff,” Gale says. “No one could socialize …. We were all working remotely, and I never saw anyone. I was just a head on Zoom.”
Her solution to the crushing isolation was walking her new neighborhood and picking up trash, an act she likens to a “prayer for a better world.” She saw other community members doing the same and decided to consolidate efforts by starting the Silverlake Trash Club.
Now, Gale is reclaiming this time in her life with a new one-woman performance titled Trash Club. The show features comedic storytelling that explores a range of emotions and experiences through the lens of trash.
“The deepest throughline is trash,” says director Teagan Rose, “and not just the literal manifestation of what we throw away in a trash can. Trash is … things we have deemed disposable when they are actually things that we don’t know how to work through, how to compost, how to alchemize.”
Trash Club asks questions about why we keep or discard stuff, people, and emotions. The show uses a mash-up of forms to illustrate the included stories, including singing, dancing, projected images, video, and even a “garbology” lesson.
Rod Lathim, who directed and produced Gale’s popular show One Good Egg, says this new show strikes a common human chord. “Trash Club,” says Lathim, “is a metaphoric journey into the harsh realities of our collective existence since the lockdown, with light at the end of the tunnel.”
See the show August 6 and 7 at Center Stage Theater (751 Paseo Nuevo). See centerstagetheater.org.
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