Civil rights heroines to come alive in new work by Island writer

Actress, writer and Islander Mik Kuhlman was awarded an independent projects grant this month from 4Culture, King County’s cultural services agency, to develop “Shadows,” Kuhlman’s new solo performance piece.

The $2,500 grant will be used as seed money to support a new collaboration between Kuhlman and dance choreographer Sonia Dawkins, focusing on women inside the civil rights movement “who lie in the shadows of history,” as Kuhlman put it. The project will be presented using shadow dances inside a series of life-sized projected historic images.

Anybody who would like to contribute information or stories on this subject or learn more about Kuhman’s work should visit www.mikkuhlman.com. A public presentation about the project will take place on Vashon this winter.

An actress as well as a movement and conceptual artist, Kuhlman recently returned to Vashon after living abroad in Paris. She said that the experience of living in two countries “had a profound impact on my personal study of human gesture and physical character.”

Kuhlman was th associate artistic director and a performer for Seattle Mime Theatre from 1991 to 1999, creating more than 20 original works that toured nationally and internationally.

She is a longtime artistic associate with UMO Ensemble and was last seen in “Zen Tales” at the Blue Heron this spring. Vashon audiences also know her through her solo show, “Split Second,” presented at the Blue Heron in 2006 and through her work with Vashon’s Artists in Schools program.