A Star Is Porn

SHERIE RENÉ SCOTT DOES OFF BROADWAY WITH DEBBIE DOES DALLAS

Many are the commonalities of pornography and the musical theater: contrived plotlines, a wealth of group scenes, a preoccupation with bales of hay. Now further points of intersection can be examined in the new offering from the folks who brought us Urinetown— Off Broadway's Debbie Does Dallas. The show is a more or less verbatim enactment of the screenplay of the 1978 porn film, but with more clothing, and with the naughty bits replaced by song. The title role—a cheerleader who resorts to pleasure-making in order to raise funds for her trip to Dallas to audition for the Texas Cowboys Cheerleaders—is played by Sherie Rene Scott, who is well versed in playing nonshyness: she was the spoiled Princess Amneris in Elton John and Tim Rice'sAida, and can be seen as Lisa Kudrow's best friend in the upcoming film Marti X Scott herself grew up on a farm in Kansas; upon hearing the title of her daughter's new show, Scott's mother, an AmishMennonite who married a Catholic, asked if it was about a tourist named Debbie who goes to Dallas. ("They're not gonna come see it," Scott says of her parents. "No way, Jose.") Scott, like Debbie, is businessminded; she and her husband founded Sh-K-Boom Records, which released Adam Pascal's, Alice Ripley's, and Scott's solo albums, and will do the Debbie Does Dallas cast recording. Is playing an initiativetaking entrepreneur as satisfying as being one? "Yes," Scott says. "I'm shakin' it for a higher cause. I'm shakin' it for the sisterhood."

HENRY ALFORD