INTERVIEW: Aerialist Dreya Weber explores witch archetypes in new solo show
Image courtesy of the artist / Provided by DKC O&M with permission.
Dreya Weber’s new theatrical show is a combination of music, dance and aerial work, all employed in order to tell a story about women who have been labeled a witch throughout history. Weber, a performer how has worked with Pink and Cher on concert aerial work, wants to explore the archetypes of the term “witch” and investigate how this word has been utilized to stigmatize women.
The show, called Hexen, will play the El Portal Theatre in Los Angeles on Saturday, Oct. 26. Another performance is scheduled for Nov. 22, with future engagements likely, though Weber is an in-demand artist with a packed 2024 and 2025 schedule.
“I think what really makes Hexen stand apart is that it’s the first time that I’ve had an opportunity to use aerial vocabulary in a fuller spectrum storytelling way,” the performer said in a recent phone interview. “Usually when I work with someone like Pink, for example, and given one of her gorgeous songs, which is like a mini story, there’s a beginning, middle and an end. There are choruses, there are verses, and we can discuss an aerial environment that maybe her fans haven’t seen before. Then I take it from there. That’s three or four minutes. In my show, which is a solo show about witch archetypes and the label ‘witch’ historically and ancestrally, I get to use aerial vocabulary in three different, very distinct storytelling ways.”
Helping Weber with her aerial work is another performer who utilizes the harnesses and ropes to pull Weber to the heights of the El Portal Theatre. “She’s one of the strongest humans I’ve ever known,” Weber said. “She is my puller. She is the person that creates the ups and downs when I go up in the air, and I love introducing her at the end of the show.”
Weber started writing Hexen because of a story that her own mother told her about their shared ancestry. Weber’s mother had researched the family’s roots and discovered that there was a female ancestor who lived in Triora, Italy, a legendary location that once held witch trials.
“She was born close to the time of three decades of massive, horrifying witch hunts,” Weber said. “Then I started to muse. What happens to the children of women who are publicly burned? Secondly, what does that generational trauma do? Then, how is this word ‘witch’ and the fear and the frenzy and mob mentality around it, how did it grow? How was it fed? Who believed it? Who didn’t? The research into that was just unbelievable.”
In her investigations of that time period in Europe, Weber found that there was a perceived corollary between the witch hunts and the weather. For example, in the 16th century, when the world was experiencing what became known as the Little Ice Age, the extremely cold and wet summers, which led to crop failure, were sometimes blamed on women, who were eventually labeled as witches.
“Those times directly related to an increase in witch trials where women were accused of weather-making,” Weber said. “I found it an academic journal. It’s so weird. I had never heard of it either. Witch hunts were economic drivers as well, which is something one doesn’t really think about. Mostly it’s fanaticism and fear, but the tribunals would basically redistribute the wealth based on who was accusing who and then move on. But the part with crop failure and grape harvest failure, because wine was a big economic driver at that time in Europe, was very important, and it was recorded by monks because it was a big business.”
Weber also offered an anecdote from her own life, which actually begins Hexen’s story
“I was, in the past couple years, accused of being a witch because I got a great job, but it wasn’t a joke,” she said. “Then I weave these research things and ancestral imaginings with three witch archetypes. [One character is] 97, and she’s an Austrian woman who lives in the times of the witch hunts. Then there’s a British performer who lives in the 1920s, and then there’s the first historic witch. So I bounce around from character to character in telling all this story, and there’s music and some dance and lots of aerials.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Hexen, written by and starring Dreya Weber, will perform Oct. 26 and Nov. 22 at the El Portal Theatre in Los Angeles. Click here for more information and tickets.
