WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — Growing up in Lebanon, Rigel Harris’ parents were both biology teachers, and, along with theater, science has always fascinated her.
In recent years, conversations with a friend who founded a biotechnology company that grew out of Dartmouth prompted Harris to think more deeply about the moral complexities of scientific inquiry, and cancer research in particular.
Often companies are “so close to putting an end to this thing and they don’t talk to each other because there’s this race for money,” Harris, 33, said in an interview in Bellows Falls, a 10-minute drive from Saxtons River, Vt., where she lives in a converted storefront.
The issue is a personal one for Harris, whose father died of melanoma when she was 21.
In talks with her friend, “I was thinking a lot about the ways in which we get paid for work, and the kind of work we do, and it having a bit of a moral judgment attached to it,” she said.
Those questions play out in the life of Eloise, the protagonist in Harris’ new show, “Body of Work,” which premieres next Friday at Briggs Opera House in White River Junction.
A doctoral candidate at New York University, Eloise has learned to exist in double. There’s the version of her that conducts potentially life-saving cancer research, and the version that works as an escort to pay her rent.
The neat outlines of those two worlds begin to smudge when Eloise falls in love with a man she encounters on the way to meet a client. She’s afraid to reveal how she makes money, but she also can’t afford to give up the work.
Simultaneously, she learns that the lab she’s part of has been fabricating data. Suddenly what was supposed to be the “ballast of her life,” the measure of her goodness, has been thrown on its head, Harris said. Meanwhile, doing sex work is where Eloise starts to feel like she can truly connect with people, even help them.
Harris likened Eloise’s experience as an escort to her own work as a birth doula, which pays her bills while she pursues acting and writing.
“Doula work is about making people feel safe, and sex work is about making people feel safe,” she said.
That relational element of sex work is often overlooked in portrayals in pop culture, Harris said, with characters frequently written by men. Sam Levinson’s sensationalizing portraits of erotic dancers and OnlyFans creators in the current season of “Euphoria” comes to mind.
Elements of “Body of Work” are heavy, but Harris has also held fast to the importance of “having a good time,” she said.
Part of doing that has meant making the play with her pals. Her intrepid director is Hanover High School alum Lulu Fairclough-Stewart, who overlapped with Harris during her time at Skidmore College.
“She brings out a child-like wonder side of me,” Harris said of her director.
Or, as Fairclough-Stewart put it: “She wanted me because I’m absolutely loco.”
An actor and writer living in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, Fairclough-Stewart, 29, related Eloise’s job at the lab to Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, wherein under capitalism the worker is isolated from the product of their labor, other people and ultimately themselves.
Her participation in sex work offers an antidote. It’s a space where she decides the conditions of her labor on her own terms.
“She’s directly involved in the making of the product,” Fairclough-Stewart said in a phone interview.
Fairclough-Stewart, who works as a server and bartender in Brooklyn, is no stranger to taking on extra jobs to support her creative pursuits.
“Once you choose to be an artist, you’re relinquishing yourself to a life of trial and financial tribulation,” she said.
And yet that path hasn’t been “as hard as people told me it was going to be,” she said. While supporting herself with her restaurant job, she’s been able to develop independent projects such as her one-woman show “Congrats to Me” and the short film “Lost Dog,” which was nominated for Best Comedy Short at the Indie Short Fest in Los Angeles earlier this year.
“A lot of actors and artists wait for permission to make their art,” she said. “Rigel and I are kind of saying f–k that, we’re going to pioneer our own art.”
But pioneering one’s own art also means finding a way to pay for it. Harris estimates it will cost about $17,000 to produce “Body of Work,” which includes paying her cast and crew.
“It felt really important to me that we pay people,” she said. Donations, including those from family and friends, have helped foot the bill, but ultimately she’s on the hook for whatever’s left over.
Etna pop diva Kelsie Hogue, aka Sir Babygirl, also hosted a dance party at the Filling Station in White River Junction a few weeks back to raise money for the show.
Last year Harris directed Hogue’s rock opera “How to Stay Sane While Losing Your Mind” at the Briggs. Now Hogue is helping Harris produce her own show.
“We’re so different in so many ways, but she’s someone I can have really safe conversations about work with,” Harris said.
In the spirit of having fun, Harris hopes to next take “Body of Work” to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, a three-week extravaganza in August when thousands of artists flock to the Scottish city to perform their fledgling works for audiences and reviewers.
“I would love nothing more than to spend some time frolicking around the city,” she said.
“Body of Work” is in production at Briggs Opera House at 7 p.m. on Friday, June 5 and Saturday, June 6 in White River Junction. For tickets ($21.40 to $70.48) and to learn more, go to bodyofworktheplay.com.
Farm party
Feast and Field’s and BarnArts’ annual summer music series begins this Thursday in Barnard with a set from the Krishna Guthrie Band. The following week will see the reunion of the original cast from “The Vermont Farm Project,” the agrarian musical developed in the Upper Valley that premiered at Northern Stage last year. Music starts at 6 p.m. To pre-order tickets (sliding scale) and learn more about the music series, go to feastandfield.com.
American idiot on campus
Students in Dartmouth College’s theater department are performing in “American Idiot,” the rock musical that borrows songs from Green Day’s explosive album by the same name, through May 31 at the Hopkins Center for the Arts in Hanover. Tickets ($15; $9 for youth and students) can be purchased at hop.dartmouth.edu.
“Fairlee” good
A group of artists whose work ranges from collage to sculpture and painting are exhibiting work at an old house in Fairlee on May 30 through June 7. The exhibit, “A ‘Fairlee’ Good Art Show” is at 1985 U.S. Route 5. Contact artist Johns Hopkins at 917-825-0296 to learn more.
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