Opening a closet full of clothes and proclaiming “I have nothing to wear” is a near-universal experience. So is laughing with friends over fun outfits in a dressing room until dread sets in: The pair of pants that was supposed to be “your size” doesn’t fit.
Essex Junction playwright Carole Vasta Folley‘s Control Top, premiering June 20 through 28 at the South Burlington Public Library Auditorium, spotlights the humorously uncomfortable memories and complicated emotions of any woman who has ever gotten dressed.
The play, written and directed by Vasta Folley with support from Vermont Arts Council‘s 2025 People’s Choice Creation Grant, features five unnamed female characters, clad in black, who spend their 90 minutes onstage in energetic, funny and sometimes somber dialogue about clothing and the patriarchy that (literally) shapes what they wear. The women’s wit and natural chemistry lead them from jokes about impossible pantyhose and ironic graphic T-shirts to honest conversations about capitalism, self-image, sexual assault and male-dominated social systems.
Vasta Folley, 64, who appears onstage as one of the characters, is an experienced playwright. Seven of her other works have been performed in Vermont, including The Sleepover — A Comedy of Marriage by Girls Nite Out Productions. She has been a finalist for the Vermont Writers’ Prize, the Writer’s Digest Writing Competition and the 2025 Women on Writing’s Creative Nonfiction competition.
“Being able to talk about this stuff is as hard as it is liberating.” Carole Vasta Folley
The funny and heartbreaking stories in Control Top were drawn from hours of interviews Vasta Folley conducted with women, including her fellow actors. She discovered that they related over struggles with clothing and body image, she said, and she wanted to use her flair for comedy to bring people together at a particularly difficult political moment.
“Being able to talk about this stuff is as hard as it is liberating. It’s both … at a time when women are losing rights,” Vasta Folley said, referring to setbacks such as the overturning of Roe v. Wade and funding cuts to research on women’s health. “And while you’re there and laughing, you might feel something. You open a door into people when they laugh. So I use laughter to get into these deeper things.”
The other actors have been active in the Vermont theater scene for years and have contributed to the script since they started table reads in Vasta Folley’s kitchen in January. They bring a captivating camaraderie to the stage.
“There are points when we’re telling our own stories,” actor Kimberly Rockwood said. “So it’s incredibly intimate. [Carole has] been very collaborative about adjusting things so that we feel real and authentic.”
Fifteen percent of ticket sales will go toward the Safety Team, a South Burlington nonprofit that offers violence prevention and trauma recovery courses. Vasta Folley said she has taken classes there to manage her own trauma from sexual abuse and feels all women deserve to find the sense of safety to open up — just like the women in Control Top.
At its funniest, her play satirizes shape wear, jeggings and every type of bra imaginable, drawing on theatrical movement, lighting and even rhyming poetry to foreground women’s experiences and enliven the performance. At its heaviest, it reveals jarring statistics about the gender pay gap and sexual assault, educating the audience about the history of women’s clothing and its role in perpetuating the patriarchy.
The show prompts audiences to think about the power clothing still holds over women. How can they reclaim their garments — and, in turn, themselves?
The original print version of this article was headlined “Comedic Play Control Top Skewers Pantyhose and the Patriarchy”
This article appears in The Food Issue 2025.
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