FRIGID Fringe Festival 2023 (Part 1)
The 17th Annual FRIGID Fringe Festival is underway in New York City. This three week event is an open and uncensored downtown theater festival that gives artists an opportunity to let their ingenuity thrive in a venue that values freedom of expression and artistic determination. Many of this year’s performances are livestreamed so there are ample opportunities to see some Indie theater works and support the artists who develop and perform them.
Sadec 1965: A Love Story
Sa Dec is described online as a small, sleepy, charming town featuring architecture from the colonial period. In Sadec 1965: A Love Story, Flora Le narrates a 2013 motorcycle journey through her father’s homeland in Vietnam. The tale is intensely personal and effusively honest.
At 31 years old, Ms. Le finds herself exhausted. Her ten year career, constant moving, negative relationships, substance abuse excesses, compulsive shopping and no family contact have left an “empty hole inside”. A “decade in therapy” did not seem to do the trick nor “more Buddhist meditation retreats than I can count”. Could this solo trip be the answer needed?
A best friend asks, “Do you think this has anything to do with your father?” I saw this show the day after viewing Ana de Armas’ Oscar nominated turn as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde. Father issues are a central element to both. Sadec 1965 comes across as a far more constructive exercise in soul searching contemplation of childhood trauma and its aftermath.
Her father left Vietnam in August of 1967 to go to college in Montreal. He meets a Canadian woman and Ms. Le is born. By the time she was five years old her father had left. Weekend visitation memories are still wounds. “I learned at a really young age we just don’t talk about things”. This upbringing provides the contextual backdrop for this philosophical attempt to connect a myriad of distressing pathways taken and, seemingly, survived.
The storytelling jumps back and forth from the past to the present. This memoir is both about a journey to her father’s homeland and an opportunity for thought. That time spent results a promise to “remain single until I find a way to heal my wounds”. Presumably this show is a testament to that hard work.
Sadec 1965 is stuffed with big revelations which, when compounded with the shifting time perspective, becomes a lot to digest in one hour. There is no doubt, however, that Ms. Le has effectively contemplated and confronted “all the shadows I’ve been carrying”. At the show’s end there definitely seems to be more sunlight in her world.
The Parenthesis
“Sometimes we’re looking for an explanation, tacking on afterthought, enriching what is already complete with a pair of rounded brackets”. That quote is from the program of The Parentheses. What comes between those brackets is often illuminating nuance. This play delves into a single relationship by exploring the delicate subtleties encased within a common framework.
Talia (Claire McClain) and Natasha (playwright Marissa Fleming) were a couple living in New York City. Talia now lives in Berlin but has a layover and meets up with her ex on short notice. The banter between the two is easy and safe at the start. “Berlin doesn’t feel like it cares if you miss out on something”. The mindset seems to suit Talia. You know there is more history here since Natasha lets her know that her mom says hi.
While Talia has used her wings to fly away to a better place, Natasha also is evolving. She turns down an educational opportunity which upset her parents. Talia is happily supportive. “You can’t spend your life chasing someone else’s dream Natasha”, she tells her. Both know each other well yet the evidence of maturation is apparent from this passage of time.
Their meeting at a café eventually turns into a walk and then a stop to Natasha’s apartment. They reconnect. A shared kiss. Their natural chemistry is tentative but present. And then the parentheses emerge providing transparency to what went wrong. The colors darken and the canvas of this relationship reflects pain.
The response to “you completely ghosted me after you left” is met with a pointed barb of leaving “Planet Natasha”. Further peeling back the onion leads to more (archetypal but serious-minded) revelations of how these two were in or not in sync during their clearly complicated relationship. Ms. Fleming’s nicely realistic play ends without definitive resolution (hopeful, perhaps messy, unknowable, like life itself).
Performances at the Frigid Fringe Festival are running through March 5, 2023. Two dozen shows are performed multiple times at either the Kraine Theater or UNDER St Mark’s. Tickets can also be purchased for many shows via livestreaming as well.