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Sashayed Away, a parody of Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Spirited Away (2001) follows ten year old Chihiro as she inadvertently enters a Japanese spirit realm. After her parents are turned into pigs by the witch Yubaba, Chihiro takes a job working in Yubaba's bathhouse to find a way to free herself and her parents and return to the human world.

Sashayed Away’s scenic elements draw inspiration from the original animated film while embracing queer references and drag aesthetics. The size restrictions of the venue required that set elements have multipurpose use, and project budget dictated a conservative palette of materials and finishes. From these constraints, an approach to put economical materials “in drag” was derived as the conceptual underpinning of the project. Cardboard, xps foam, paper, and other affordable materials received application of paint, glitter, rhinestones, and/or projection to enhance their visual presence onstage. By investigating the overlap between the mundane and the expressive, questions arise:

Can cardboard be dusted?

Is polyethylene sickening boots?