Out There Theatre Co. stages a jazzercise class disguised as a play about jazzercise
Written by Larry Clow
Forget the fitness influencers and park your Peloton — when it comes to feeling the burn, all you need is some neon spandex, a kickin’ soundtrack, and a dedicated instructor. That’s right: Jazzercise, the peak 1980s exercise fad, is back.
Except this time, it’s on stage. “The Last Class: A Jazzercise Play” is the latest mainstage production from Out There Theater Co., a theater group based in Portland that aims to build community and push boundaries with their unconventional productions. “The Last Class” follows Jazzercise instructor Kelsea Wiggans (played by Kathryn Kellogg, also the show’s choreographer) as she navigates the end of her long-running exercise class at the Portland Community Center and faces the dawn of a new fad: a Zumba class led by her nemesis. The twist: “The Last Class” is staged as an actual Jazzercise session, with Kellogg and co-star Grace MacNeil dancing and sweating their way through an hour-long class.
The show runs Aug. 21-30 at SPACE in Portland and will also feature cameo appearances from members of the city’s arts community — at each show, two guest artists will act as “students” in the class.
“I’ve been doing theater for many years as an actor — this is actually my directorial debut, and it’s the most unique script that I’ve ever worked with before,” says director Joanna Clake, who is also a co-founder of Out There Theater Co. “It’s definitely a fun challenge.”
At first glance, staging a play as an aerobics class seems like a strange fit. But playwright Megan Hill says the two are similar, in terms of dramatic structure. The play “rattled around in my brain for years,” says Hill. “Even though I knew what the story was, I realized that the reason I couldn’t write it was because I needed to have the actual class first. So, I essentially wrote the play backwards. I came up with the playlist first, and each song had a different plot point or event attached to it, and I began writing from there.”
Hill lives in Brooklyn, and “The Last Class” has had acclaimed runs in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Seattle, among other cities. Though Jazzercise occupies a unique niche in the fitness world, Hill says the story’s themes are universal — and highly relevant in a culture that emphasizes turning passions into side hustles and prizes visible success above pursuing an interest just for the pure fun of it.
“The play is about what it’s like to pursue something you love, what it’s like to be a small business owner, what it’s like to not have a safety net, what it’s like to work with an injury, what it’s like to lose,” Hill says. “It’s about ego and resiliency and friendship and so much more.”
For Clarke, staging “The Last Class” presented a unique artistic opportunity: how do you take a scripted production that relies on choreography and music and keep it structured enough to tell a story while keeping the narrative flexible enough to let the cast and other collaborators work out an emotional arc in real time?
“My main goal is making sure the story of what’s happening during this class comes through,” she says. “The show is a fun take on the stages of grief and accepting some very big changes. The main theme is about what happens when you invest in something trendy like Jazzercise … and the trends are constantly changing – do you change or do you sink your feet in and try and stick it out?”
Though it’s commonly associated with home video-based exercise fads in the 1980s, Jazzercise got its start in 1969. Creator Judi Sheppard Missett, a dance teacher, noticed that her students were more interested in the physical benefits of dance than getting on stage to perform. Missett’s students connected with the movement and the music, and soon the warm-up exercises that began each class became the main attraction. After she moved from the Midwest to California, Missett’s innovative exercise program exploded, with franchises popping up across America. Parallel to the rapid growth of the new home video market, Jazzercise became a phenomenon.
“I love how theatrical and campy and joyful Jazzercise is. People think it’s a very specific style of dance, like Jane Fonda or [the actual creator], but it’s grown a lot since the 1980s and 1990s, and there’s lots of modern choreography.” As Clarke and the Out There Theater Co. have promoted the show, they’ve heard from Jazzercise fans and practitioners around Portland. Unlike some fads, Jazzercise didn’t disappear — there are still classes in Gorham, South Portland, Yarmouth, and other locations. In fact, Clarke says she heard from one Jazzercise group who jokingly asked, “Is this play about us?”
This year marks Out There Theater Company’s third season. “The Last Class” is the company’s fourth mainstage show. Clarke and co-founders Dalton Kimball and Sarah Kennedy were friends for more than 10 years before they set out to create their own company.
“We just can’t stop,” Clarke says. “We have so many goals for what we want to produce, and so many people we want to work with. It’s been incredible how it has all come together. I never expected to be the co-founder of a theater company, but here I am.”
Jazzercise’s evolution from brick-and-mortar fitness studios to an enduring cultural touchstone also demonstrates how vital community and physical spaces are to people, according to Hill. Having a place to gather, whether it’s a Jazzercise class or a stage production of a fictional Jazzercise class, creates an incomparable energy.
“We need to have community experiences. We need to be pushed out of our comfort zones,” Hill says. “We need to be able to laugh at ourselves when we don’t know something and not be scared to put ourselves in positions of learning. … It’s a beautiful thing to be in a space, whether it’s an exercise class or a performance or a concert, with a group of strangers, trying and experiencing something together.”
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“The Last Class” runs from Friday, Aug. 21 through Sunday, Aug. 30 at SPACE, 538 Congress St., Portland. Tickets on sale now.