East High Alumni and Students Stage World Premiere of Everything About Your Skin

What started as a casual conversation between friends about summer plans quickly morphed into a new theatrical production exploring the emotional cost of transformation.

“I just asked Conrad, ‘Are you doing any theater this summer?’” recalls Kaeyla Taavialma, the director of Everything About Your Skin. “He was like, ‘I am now.’” From that moment in May, Taavialma and playwright Conrad Branch, both recent graduates of Denver’s East High School, assembled a team of fellow students and alumni to stage the first production of Branch’s new play.

The result is Everything About Your Skin, a haunting and heartfelt one-act drama premiering August 5 and 6 at the People’s Building in Aurora. Set in the waiting room of a mysterious medical clinic, the story centers on Macie, a teenager navigating the costs of a controversial beauty procedure. As Macie and her fellow patients prepare for their transformations, secrets emerge, perspectives clash and the lines between care and control blur.

“It’s part drama, part horror,” says stage manager Lillian McGlothlen. "When describing it to people, I always ask, 'Have you seen Invasion of the Body Snatchers?’ Because that's like the first body modification movie that I think about, and this is definitely exploring similar themes."

Branch, an Oberlin College student, had long been fascinated by how our bodies store stories and how society pressures us to rewrite them.

"There are so many parts of skin that go into our identity and tell our past," Branch says. "It says stuff about us, but also maybe our insecurities or what we hold as our greatest feature. I've been writing a lot about that recently, and I've been very fascinated with body modification and the beauty industry, because I feel like we're in a weird time where it is this very demonized thing on both spectrums of the country. Whether it's changing or modifying your body to fit the gender identity you go with or modifying your body to fit the expectations of society, both are critiqued and attacked."

The play pushes boundaries thematically and emotionally, with content warnings for self-harm, domestic abuse, sexual harassment and violent extremism. But Taavialma, a sophomore at Bard College, said the work balances its darker moments with humor.

"The piece is a little freaky," Taavialma says. "It can feel a little sinister at times but it's also lighthearted and caring and deeply personal. I think a lot of things that the characters go through in the show are deeply personal, and I think that is very intertwined in what Conrad was talking about in the way that our skin is also so deeply personal and in the way that it just tells the story of our lives."

Staging the show was a scrappy endeavor. Written in June and rehearsed throughout the summer in backyards and basements, the team originally expected to perform in a park or public space. But a stroke of luck connected Branch with Aaron Vega, director of The People’s Building, who offered them a rare opening on the venue’s summer calendar.

“I think we forgot how far in advance most theaters book,” says Taavialma, laughing. “But the People’s Building just had the perfect dates open, and they were really excited to support a student-led project. It suddenly made this feel very real.”

McGlothlen agreed. “This whole production has teetered between ‘We’re just a group of friends playing in the backyard’ and ‘We’re mounting a real show.’ Finding a theater space like this helped tip the scales.”
The cast consists of six performers, all of whom are connected through East High, and rehearsals are squeezed in between their summer plans.

"We had something called the Hound List, and it was lovingly named that because those are the lists of our friends that we wanted to come audition," Taavialma says. "What made it easy was I love this show, and I really wanted to put it on, and I knew that if people just read Conrad's writing, they would fall in love with it too."

Despite the fast turnaround, Branch emphasized the show’s collaborative evolution.

"I've gotten the chance to work on a couple of new works, and I believe collaboration is critical," Branch says. "As a writer, you can't just write something and say, ‘This is the masterpiece.’ There's always going to be discoveries while developing it with the director and actors. I've come to really enjoy that kind of process and just like letting accepting that a script might be slightly fluid for a moment before it can solidify into a solid production."

Though the current production clocks in at about an hour, Branch sees Everything About Your Skin as a concept with room to grow.

"I've always thought of it as a longer performance," Branch says. "I'm hoping that one day I can expand on it because there's just an endless sea of possibilities where every day I think, 'Wait, a new person who could walk into that room and tell their story about why they are in that room, and why they are worthy of changing whatever they're changing.' So, while I hope to continue developing the play, it's also exciting to know that, regardless, this cast and director have had an impact on the script that will last forever."

Everything About Your Skin is Tuesday, August 5 and Wednesday, August 6, at the People's Building, 9995 East Colfax Avenue, Aurora. Learn more at thepeoplesbuilding.com.