Yoga Play
Dipika Guha
Los Altos Stage Company
& Jaime Meléndez
Newly hired CEO, Joan, is more than ready to steer the luxury, athletic-wear, mega-company, Jojoman, into new heights after its former CEO was quoted (and then fired) while claiming, “it was the size of women’s thighs” that was causing one of their $200 pants to appear transparent, “not the fabric itself.” All she must do is now convince the founder, John — who is on a video call from some South Sea isle where he is about to begin a month’s sabbatical — to allow her to let go of his vision of “aspirational branding,” only offering women’s clothes up to Size 8. She instead wants the company to embrace new customers — oops, “family members” in the company’s required jargon — up to Size 12, thus allowing more women to own clothes that “spark joy” (while of course also increasing the company coffers by untold millions). After all, what woman of any size wouldn’t want to run out and buy a pair of soft, stretchy pants with “slow-release, organic lavender activated by water” that have made focus group participants “want to hold on to their clothes even after a sweaty yoga class”?
Founders, executive teams, and their companies’ ads that espouse New Age, la-la values are the focus of Dipika Guha’s, Yoga Play, now in an oft-laugh-out-loud production by Los Altos Stage Company. The 2017-premiering play is packed with tongue-in-cheek, full-of-satire references to a certain, similar company (Lululemon) whose CEO in a 2013 Blumberg interview sparked a huge controversy by claiming “some women’s bodies just don’t actually work for Lululemon leggings.” That same year, the CEO later claimed in his book Little Black Stretchy Pants, that the company had to recall 17% of its pants for being too sheer, costing the company about $60 million. Guha’s script and LASC’s production poke fun at similar confluence of yoga-gone-wild and profits-above-all.
Please continue to Talkin’Broadway for the rest of my review.
Rating: 3.5 E
Yoga Play continues through February 15, 2026, in a two-hour (with intermission) production by Los Altos Stage Company, 97 Hillview Avenue, Los Altos, CA. Tickets are available online at https://losaltosstage.org/; in person Thursday and Friday, 3 – 6 p.m. at the theatre’s box office; or by phone at 650-941-0551.
Photo Credit: Christian Pizzirani
