Megan Elk began performing in opera and musical theater before settling on the stage name Miss Alexandra Huntingdon and hitting the Cleveland clubs. A self-proclaimed “rust-belt glamour queen,” she describes her music as original songs with a retro-pop/cabaret sensibility.

Now, she’s co-developed a new genre-defying performance, Waist High & Elbow Deep. Elk developed the concept with 2016 Creative Workforce Fellow Megan Young, a part-time faculty member at Kent State University and theater/dance faculty at Beck Center for the Performing arts in Lakewood.

The cast includes Angela Luem, Meghan Murphy-Sanchez and Penelope Hearne as well as local artists Amanda Clark Tanruther, Trina Hines, Emily Austin and Marcia Custer. Waist High & Elbow Deep aims to present performers as “surrogates, objects, and proxies — directed by viewer participants.”

Elk provides the original sound score. The work will have its local premiere at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 22, at the New World Performance Labe in Akron as part of the Center for Applied Theater & Active Culture series in Akron. Tickets are available now for $10, $5 for students. 

This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2016.

Jeff has been covering the Cleveland music scene for more than 25 years now. On a regular basis, he tries to talk to whatever big acts are coming through town. And if you're in a local band that he needs to hear, email him at jniesel@clevescene.com.