Performance artist Ayun Halliday discovered massage therapy while traveling in the jungles of Sumatra.
Though she wasn’t aware of it at the time, Halliday had been traveling through Southeast Asia looking for some sign of what to do with her life. She felt she was drifting through her 20s, her only goal to avoid her parents’ lives of middle-class desperation. Her mother was the fashion editor of the Indianapolis Star (she “didn’t find writing about fashion very challenging”), while her father was a banker who secretly longed to be an English teacher.
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“I was gonna drop out of theater and be a poet when a friend of mine, who was the dramaturge at Stage Left, said, “I think you should audition for Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. I think you would really like it.’ I thought, well, what the hell.” She had never seen the show, a rapid-fire performance of 30 plays in 60 minutes, but she decided to try out anyway.
As soon as she returned to Chicago, she enrolled in the Chicago School of Massage Therapy. Now a certified massage therapist, Halliday divides her time between acting and massage. She has a private practice and also works with the AIDS Alternative Health Project, treating clients who have tested positive for HIV. She says the project advocates alternative and holistic medicine: “acupuncture, Chinese herbs, western herbs, chiropractic, energy work.”
Bagel: Anatomy as Simile is at the Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland, through May 6. Shows are at 8 PM Fridays and Saturdays; there’ll also be an 8 PM performance on Monday, April 17. Tickets are $7; call 275-5255.
