Interview with Jill Morley
Author and star of "Confessions of a Go-Go Dancer" a long running play in New York City small off-off Broadway theaters.

Editor’s notes: Jill Morley is a woman in her early 30’s. She was born and raised in New Jersey, but moved to New York City to pursue a career as an actress. In the interim she danced as a go-go dancer with the stage name, Dylan. She wrote a one-woman play from her experiences as a go-go dancer, and played several typical dancer characters in it.

The show slowly made waves, and Ms. Morley had prospects that it will be bought for a movie. The newspapers were talking about big name stars interested in playing the lead. Then I didn’t hear about Jill for about two years, until she faxed me an invitation last summer.

Recently she "revamped" the show and added 2 female characters and a male, who don’t speak, but are on stage with her almost all the time.

Mentertainment has reviewed the original version of the show, published an interview with Jill Morley. As a result of that faxed invitation I visited the new production and decided to interview Ms. Morley again. The interview was conducted on the phone in July 1997. The original review and interview by John Petrocelli will be posted on our Internet site shortly.

Jill: What do you want to talk about?

Sophie: I'll tell you what prompted me to ask for this interview. What I was very intrigued by is that after having spent two years in go-go you are now trying to create a life that is successful and profitable and rewarding, like a life after, that we, in this industry, don’t know much about.

Jill: Yes.

Sophie: I also noticed that life is taking a toll on you. You're not as young as you were four years ago. This altogether is very intriguing. You seem to me like a hero. Someone who can be held up as an example, as an inspiration to other people. But I don't know what is going on. I want to find out if I can inspire people with your example or maybe inspire them with your negative example, (ha-ha). But either way I think your life potentially inspires people. So, let's go back a little in history. Mentertainment readers do not necessarily know you today. You used to dance in New Jersey, as a go-go dancer, and then wrote a one-woman play from your experiences, and have been performing it in small theaters in New York City. I saw it four years ago, and again, last week. How long ago did you dance in New Jersey?

Jill: Five.

Sophie: You started five years ago and you danced for two straight years. You never danced after two years?

Jill: I did. After a year off, I went back to dancing, and I did topless for three months.

Sophie: How did that go?

Jill: Not well. I ended it after three months.

Sophie: Did you do it in New York?

Jill: Yes.

Sophie: Well at least in New York they don't touch you, do they?

Jill: Yea, a little. Well actually, yes and no, depends on the club. Not in one of the clubs, yes in the other one, Lace, in Nyack, but for the most part I wasn't touched. Then table dancing came in.

Sophie: And that wasn’t for you?

Jill: I made a lot more money with it, and that was good, but in the end I guess it took a toll on me.

Sophie: In what way?

Jill: When I danced on the stage I was far enough removed from the customers to feel that I was giving a performance to the audience, whereas doing table dances I felt more like a whore or a prostitute. It's more personal for each customer, which I felt was a bigger sacrifice than what I was prepared to give for the money.

Sophie: Were you in a relationship at the time?

Jill: No

Sophie: You wouldn't have lasted for three months.

Jill: You don't think so?

Sophie: No. It may be cheating on your loved one every time you danced for someone.

Jill: Yea, but some girls do that.

Sophie: Some girls have a different philosophy in life.

Jill: I don't judge girls who do it. I think that if they can do it and it's not affecting them, that's great. I just think that you run your course in it. In the beginning I thought that dancing was really good for me. It taught me a lot of things, and then it started to take away from who I was, so I got out. Sometimes girls stay in it past this time and it hurts them badly. One such friend disappeared, another friend died, and make no mistake: they weren't happy in what they were doing: it was a trap for them. It became a trap. It doesn't have to become a trap. It wasn't a trap for me overall. I actually got a lot out of it and I created a whole other world with my art from it.

Sophie: I wanted to share with you that I live by the commitment never to do anything for money that I wouldn't do for free. That keeps me away from being in any situation of prostitution. That comes up very frequently. Not only in a bodily way, you know?

Jill: Women who do go that far... maybe their boundaries were violated at an earlier age which makes it easier for that boundary to be violated over and over again from several different men.

Sophie: Also maybe they have see themselves as not valuable.

Jill: Yea, I feel bad for them and I would love to inspire anyone that way. When I quit dancing I wasn't making money. I started catering and walking dogs for a living. I didn't make in a week what I would make in a night dancing. But I had myself back and since then I feel like I've grown and I'm able to tell my story and not be ashamed of it. I like to strip in my show because I'm doing it on my own terms. When I was doing it at strip bars, at first I thought I was doing it on my own terms but in the end I realized I was really compromising myself because I normally wouldn't take off my clothes for a bunch of men that I don't know.

Sophie: I do believe that in the beginning it was something that you probably would have done for free for the result that it could produce: to learn to be a woman and appreciate your body and act like a woman, etc. Now I don't know if it accomplished that. Did it?

Jill: I think so, but now that I know that I can, I don't even do that as much. I don't dress extremely feminine... I like being sexy, but I don't like being a "girlie" girl, which is what I’ve learned how to be. But I am not a girlie girl at heart. It's nice to know that I can when I want, but I prefer to wear what I want to wear which is more like jeans or black bell bottoms and T-shirts.

Sophie: I saw your show four years ago. And then John Petrocelli interviewed you four years ago for Mentertainment?

Jill: Yes, I guess so. I wrote the show four years ago and I started performing it, it will be four years ago in the fall.

Sophie: So the show ran for two years then I started to see articles in the papers that big name stars wanted to buy the rights.

Jill: Right. I was on the front cover of New York Newsday, it was in the Daily News... I was flown out to LA to shop the film rights and I met with the presidents of major studios. At the time people were not sure about what I was doing. People in Hollywood didn't know what I was trying to do with the show.

Sophie: What did they hope that you were doing? What did they want to buy?

Jill: They either wanted an exploitation film, which was not what I had, or that's what they thought it was and they didn't want anything to do with it.

Sophie: But they showed no interest in something compassionate, contemporary, telling how it is, and the personal growth of a person?

Jill: My interpretation didn't make sense to them. I think a lot of people liked it when we said all go-go dancers were victims but god forbid someone draws power or learns from the experience. I feel a responsibility for what I write about so I didn’t sell out to write what they wanted to buy. ...And then a whole bunch of stripper kind of movies came out.

Sophie: Do you know what I think? That this is not a stripper play.

Jill: No, it's a woman play.

Sophie: It's not even a woman play. It's a human being play, because it's neither stripper-specific, nor woman-specific. It's life specific. It's human specific. It's about the attitude that whatever happens to you, or around you serves a purpose and it's your job to dig that purpose out and grow from it. And that is a big message, because that's not how people look at life. People live like "I sell my time and life is what happens in the time I didn’t sell." People live on Saturday and Sunday, they don't see that Monday through Friday is part of life. And then they can’t benefit from the Monday through Friday part of life, only from the money they make then. Your example, your whole story should be made into an inspiring message by some very talented director. It's not a woman show, even though you are a woman. It has almost less to say to a woman than to a human being. As a woman I couldn't see myself in it, but as a human being I absolutely and completely, found myself in it.

Jill: Yea. I get told it's a woman's show, I get told I'm a feminist, but I say I'm a humanist.

Sophie: Well that's why it hasn't gone further, because nobody saw the human story. Maybe once we finish the interview we should continue talking and you could use the power of my interpretation to actually take it further and maybe we can brainstorm of what you can do and which way you can go...

Jill: ...the other thing is that I have to let go of it. I've been making a documentary film for three years and direct it and I produce it. I know all the women who are in it and the stories are so compelling and real that that's where my energy is going. It's not that I'm trying to sell this story idea to Hollywood, I'd rather follow the real women and show what great people they are and honor them and their stories and their lives, than think about how I can get this thing I wrote four years ago into a Hollywood film. I really don't care. I have some people who are still trying to shop it around in LA. If it sells, great, I'll make some money, and if not, I'm making this documentary anyway so the work will get out. I love when strippers come to the show, and customers come to the show, and when go-go people come to the show because we all know what it's like to be inside those walls and we all share this bond. I used to love to invite the customers and the dancers. When they come we usually stay afterwards and talk.

Sophie: You have a completely different mindframe than I do. So we have a completely different intention and what turns you on about the show is very different from what turns me on. So we shouldn't talk about what turns me on, let's talk about what turns you on, (ha-ha). There are lots of men just as hooked and unable or unwilling to say "this is my real life" as the dancers. Do you think that they would gain, from your show, some power, to get themselves a life?

Jill: What do you mean by that? I think they have a life, I just think their life is very empty, and they use the go-go bars as a crutch. I just mean the guys who go on a regular basis. Because some other guys will come in for a beer with their buddies, and that's just culture I think. Especially in Jersey, guys just do that. I like those guys, because they don't seem to want as much from me. They just want to be entertained, and I want to entertain them, great! It's when they want to touch you and ask you your life story and to be their therapist that it's not.

Sophie: So you really think that an empty life is still a life? (Sophie’s note: Let me state here that the content of a life is not what transpires in it, not what fills it, valuable or not, it is the future that is the content of life. The future where life is heading, where it is actively being steered. That is the content of life. So an empty life is where it’s heading to nowhere, and there has been no formulation of a future to thrive for. For example I have been noticing that as a business person I don’t have a life. I get up in the morning, I do my job, I worry when it isn’t going well, I celebrate when it goes well, but yet, I don’t have a life. What is missing? A plan, a goal, a purpose. Someone who has a life is in action for a future that has been formulated and declared. I haven’t done that. Someone who doesn’t have a life/plan is the victim of everyday circumstances, and has nothing to say in the matter of his/her life, because he/she has none. (It is not a bad thing, except in comparison with having a life, which is wonderful. (I still remember!) I did not say it inside the conversation, so Jill Morley doesn’t understand that I compare lives to this "ideal" and only in this context they, regulars in bars, may have no life.)

Jill: Well, yea. You're living and breathing, it is a life, but it's an empty life.

Sophie: Maybe not a human life.

Jill: Well you are human.

Sophie: If your life is not human, if it's a vegetable life then it's not a human life.

Jill: But there is the ability to change it and turn it around, which in return makes it a life. The thing is people just don’t take responsibility for their lives. They have a victim's mentality like, "Well, this is it, I have an empty life." And I'm like, "Yea, but I've been able to turn things around a lot of times and it's been really hard." And you have too, I know.

Sophie: But I never said my life was empty though.

Jill: No, I know that.

Sophie: Well we actually got to some common ground.

Jill: Yes, but I didn't mean to infer that your life was empty. I'm just saying that you know what it's like to take responsibly for your life and turn things around and then you can look up and go for what you want rather than just accept whatever darkness there is.

Sophie: It takes some courage to go for what you want. There is nothing available in the world that you want. You always have to go for it and it takes courage. It's not just lying around waiting for you to pick it up. There is nothing worth having that doesn't take courage. So if somebody comes to your show, a man, whose life is empty, who has been filling this void by going to go-go bars, hoping that the time there won't feel that empty. Do you think that coming to your play, they get a glimpse of courage that could be available to them and that there is life that they could go for, and it's worth going for? or they just get see more of stripping, woman, and you’re stuck with that.

Jill: Well, I think that they do get something. I'm going to be an optimist. I hope they get something from it. And a lot of times I'll get guys coming up to me after the show and it's good for them to learn that some of the strippers’ lives feel very empty too. And they would never imagine that because they're these gorgeous creatures dancing in front of all these men, getting all this attention, and the guys don't realize that a lot of dancers feel emptiness in their lives and doing the dancing gives them a charge. But I compare it much to a drug. It feels like it's high and power, but in reality it's not grounded in anything. And it's fun while you're doing it, especially in the beginning, but in the end you go home with what you had. You have money and that's great, but after the money is spent, it leaves a weird feeling. I just know from experience. Now I'm getting paid to write articles or I'm getting paid to do interviews and that feels really good because I'm using the whole part of who I am instead of just my body or my sexuality. I'm using more of who I am than that character I portray on stage.

Sophie: Who did you interview?

Jill: I did an interview with an Austrian documentary recently. They interviewed me about my views on money, as I'm a stripper who has recovered (laugh).

Sophie: Oh, I thought you were interviewing somebody else.

Jill: Oh, no, no, no. I do interview people when I'm doing my documentary, but I don't get paid for that. I get paid by the different publications that interview me. I've been kicking around for a while now with this show, and although I have not received the kind of acclaim that I have hoped for, and the success that I’ve hoped for, people have taken notice and I do get calls. I'm going to be interviewed for the New York Newsday next week. Things like that--that people have noticed my work and appreciate it and want to include me in the main stream--it’s rewarding.

Sophie: Is there any message that you would like the dancers to hear from you?

Jill: Again, I don't want them to think that just because I'm out of the business now I'm judging them. I support women who are in the business, but I support them to really look at other parts of who they are, if they're trying to do other things, like acting or putting themselves through school. To really pay attention to that. That may sound corny, but maybe you know what I'm getting at. To strengthen who they are. To strengthen themselves in other ways besides the dancing, and focus on that. And if dancing starts to really hurt them or destroy them or they feel like they're trapped, to get out.

Sophie: Okay, so I think that would make an interesting interview. This is probably the first interview where the interviewee and myself have major major differences of view.

Jill: Where do you have a different view?

Sophie: Everywhere. Completely. It's very interesting.

Jill: Do you think it's too overpowering?

Sophie: No.

Jill: Then how was it different? What's your point of view that's different?

Sophie: Well, mostly about what's an empty life. What life is about. What's available to women. What keeps people hooked and how they relate to it.

Jill: Well, I didn't really discuss all those things in detail.

Sophie: I know. You don't have to agree with me. Probably ninety percent of my readers will agree with you.


Jill Morley, is back in NYC. Her fans can see her Aug 13th-15th and Aug 19th-20th at Mother, 875 Washington St, 212-459-4352 for reservations.