Unfinished Business
Co-Creators and Performers: Melinda Jean Myers and Kurt Chiang
Presenter: Lucky Plush Productions
Production Stage Manager: Mariana Tejeda
Lighting Design: Jacob Snodgrass
Sound Engineer: Sathapat Sangsuwan
Photography: Ella Kang
Support for Unfinished Business is made possible through project grants from the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts; development support through Lucky Plush’s Embodied Research Program and a creative residency at The Yard (Martha’s Vineyard, MA); and season support from Illinois Arts Council Agency, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the MacArthur Funds for Culture, Equity and the Arts at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Peter G. and Elizabeth Torsion Foundation, and Chicago’s CityArts Program through the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
Premiered at Links Hall in Chicago IL
October 20-22, 2022
Presented at Martha’s Vineyard, MA
June 2022
Premiere at Englert Theatre, Presented by Englert Wavelength: Deeper Learning Through the Arts
May 2022
“Myers and Chiang remind us that dance-theater is alive and well, retaining its emphasis on embodied collaborations between people, between speech and movement, between humor and tenderness, and between what occurs on stage and what lies just beyond its four white walls.”
- Clara Nizard, Performance Response Journal
“What both Chiang and Myers hope audiences for Unfinished Business will take away is an appreciation for their own journeys, inside or outside of the arts, where the “busyness” of life so often gets in the way of what we think we should be doing, or our self-image of what success means.”
- Kerry Reid, Performance Preview for Chicago Reader
Mindy and Kurt have always wanted something. They wanted to dance (Mindy), and to act (Kurt). Eventually, they got what they wanted, whether it was a role, a part, a job, a career, and so on. But it wasn’t what it seemed to be. What they wanted was different. Or it could be, or should be. What they wanted – from dancing, from acting – was changing all the time, from year to year, or from the time it took to walk across the room. In the meantime, they wound up here, in front of you, the audience.
Unfinished Business is a two-person dance and theater performance created while the artists lived in different cities. Mindy and Kurt exchanged voice memos, archiving a lively exchange of thoughts, opinions, knee-jerk reactions and free-wheeling associations. The memos serve as a soundscape in a show woven together with elements of dance, movement, theater and gesture. Stage actions derive from the show’s title – reaching for something out of reach, moving the body in ways it doesn’t move anymore, climbing ladders that lead to nowhere. Mindy and Kurt question their own trajectories, challenging each other along the way, in an attempt to create a moment with the audience that is honest and entirely present.
