By Bill Hirschman, FloridaTheaterOnStage.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Nov. 8, 2015 – King Solomon had it easy. Faced with two women claiming to be an infant’s mother, he only had to threaten to chop the child in two to determine who loved the child most.
But in Christopher Demos-Brown’s shattering world premiere Stripped at Zoetic Stage, the audience faces a more complex dilemma with no villains and no unalloyed winners. At its center is an immigrant who pole dances in a strip club (among other entrepreneurial side-activities) solely to ensure her child’s future. Suddenly, state officials want to strip her of her beloved daughter and give her to a well-heeled loving foster family.
This summary may sound like a ripped-from-the-headlines episode of Law & Order (or The Miami Herald) but Demos-Brown and Zoetic dig far deeper. Stripped forces the audience to judge past the surface facets of a case in which it will be impossible to “do no harm.”
