FRIGID festival

FRIGID Festival 2019, Part 2

Leah Richards — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 15:00:00 +0000

FRIGID Festival 2019, Part 2 Leah Richards March 5, 2019 - 10:00

Topics

Tags

Welcome to the second part of our coverage of the 13th annual FRIGID Festival, the only theater festival in New York City in which all of the proceeds go to the artists themselves. The 2019 FRIGID Festival runs from February 20th to March 10th at the Kraine and IATI Theaters and, as always, has 25 more shows on offer than the four that we discuss here and in our previous dispatch, so we encourage everyone to check out the full listing of productions on the FRIGID website, where you can also find the performance times and locations for all the shows. FRIGID faced the additional challenge this year of a last-minute relocation of a number of shows due to a burst pipe just before the festival opened, but, luckily for audiences, this formidable obstacle wasn't enough to stop these artists, and the show will, in fact, go on.

CC: You in Hell!

Written by Mark Levy

Directed by Janet Bentley

Presented by Hub Theatricals at the Kraine Theater, NYC

February 20-March 10, 2019

An early reference to the 1998 slasher film Urban Legend winkingly establishes the pop-cultural milieu that infuses Mark Levy's new play CC: You in Hell!, making its debt at the FRIGID Festival. Levy himself plays the professor who brings up Urban Legend, a man who teaches a class on 90s pop culture and its impact. He is also the one responsible for forwarding an email chain letter to a group of other characters. The problem with this is not so much that the chain email has basically been rendered extinct in today's internet ecosystem as it is that, when this email says that recipients must forward it to seven other people or else die, it makes good on that threat. This mechanic, reminiscent, of course, of Ringu, another 1998 film, and its haunted VHS tape, introduces us to the unfortunates who will have to make (or in some cases be affected by) the choice to press "forward" or "delete." There is Nicholas (John Racioppo), recent college grad and aspiring writer who works at Optimum (not the one you think) in telemarketing under a boss (James B. Kennedy) who is something of an armpit-stained Glengarry Glen Ross type (he has a line about how a knife is a tool and using it invariably changes things that is memorably creepy). Charlie (Sara Detrik) and Jordan (Caroline Burke), the former flannel-clad and unemployed and the latter a poised workaholic, are having some relationship issues, though not because of Charlie's admission that she has had Crispin Glover on her mind a lot lately. Stu (Sam Mercer) is seventeen and primarily interested in playing MMOs with his online friend Candee@$$69 (Stevie Roetzel in voiceover) under the concerned watch of his single mother, Claudia (Taylor Graves). Kara (Sara Detrik) is a vapid streamer promoting "KaraCon," an event dedicated to herself, and Irene (Taylor Graves), the professor's ex-wife, has very recently moved in with young, attractive, and sex-obsessed Hank (John Racioppo). Finally, after having been in a cult and missed 18 years of social and cultural change while in prison, Ryan (Mark Levy) is back home and living with his hilariously similarly-mannered father (James B. Kennedy). Besides the professor himself, the common thread uniting these characters is an apartment-warming party hosted by Jess (Kayla Mason) in Greenpoint, Brooklyn—but not all of the invitees will make it.

One could perhaps interpret the deadly chain letter as a metaphor for the internet-enabled circulation of toxic negativity or, like some of the horror movies it implicitly or explicitly alludes to, as an expression of anxieties about technology; but CC: You in Hell! functions primarily as a comedic and affectionate spin on its points of reference, sprinkled with Blink-182 cues and including a fun little coda. That is not to say that there isn't some genuine pathos, particularly once the survivors converge at the party (complete with some very realistic door buzzer and shoe removal action) and their interpersonal relationships come more to the fore. Graves in particular invests her characters with authenticity; meanwhile, Kennedy is extremely funny in two very different roles, bordering on scene-stealing in tandem with Levy as the flat-affected father-son pair. Detrik too embodies two wildly different characters, and the silent Death (performer redacted) provides some good physical comedy. Whether your reaction to the idea of a killer chain email is, like ours, "Wow; I remember getting those and therefore feel old" or, like Stu's, "What's a chain email?," CC: You in Hell! is a great time. Now forward this review to seven people, or else.

River of Fire

Written and performed by David Lee Morgan

Presented at IATI Theater, NYC

February 23-March 9, 2019

David Lee Morgan's River of Fire was written for four performers playing seven characters but is being presented at FRIGID entirely by Morgan himself, an American expat and U.K. and BBC Slam Poetry Champion. The third of a trilogy published as The River Was a God, River of Fire imagines a war-torn near future in which a human consciousness can be uploaded onto the World Wide Web, effectively allowing the purchase of immortality (of a sort, anyway), while a roiling globe rockets towards a socialist revolution. Despite the cast of one, Morgan makes the narrative easy to follow, both with his performance and by cannily dividing the stage into three areas, one to signify Bangladesh, home to South Asian Socialist Alliance leader Hamida and her daughter Sulthana; one to signify the Los Angeles Commune, home to orphan and war veteran Jesse; and the third to signify the "beehive brain" of the globally networked computer. We may not always know precisely who the different characters in the digital realm are, but such identification is not essential for absorbing the plot and themes, and it arguably helps to represent the disorienting plenitude of voices that Jesse experiences after he volunteers to upload his own consciousness into the network in service of the Socialist Alliance cause. Jesse, who had enlisted in the military at 16, wishes now to take his chance to fight for the right side, and the story of his sacrifice unfolds alongside one of cross-cultural romance, the U.S. government attacking its own citizens, and the push towards far-reaching rebellion.

River of Fire bills itself as a spoken word musical, and it boasts an enjoyable formal hybridity, including traditional singing, spoken dialogue, and sections delivered in a more typical poetry slam cadence, these last most commonly associated with the computer setting and some of the most energizing. The score makes effective use of sampling and recurring motifs (and, appropriately, employs lots of synth). Stand-out songs include one that reiterates the maxim "Gotta be normal" in discussing flooding surveillance with useless information and is paired with a very physical performance, and a later example within the computer that schizophrenically incorporates snatches of other bits of other songs. The show puts forward some interesting concepts, such as its juxtaposition of the inability to engage in physical intimacy as a digitized consciousness with the fact that these consciousnesses feel like they can feel, the proposition that a person basically comprises a web of connected stories, and the observation that people swear "never again" after every war. While the Alliance wonders why anyone should starve in twenty-first century, much less millions, some in the digital realm see humankind as an enemy, a danger to be eliminated rather than, as others see it, a part of the environment, to be preserved and protected. River of Fire itself comes down on the side of the Alliance and its philosophy of care for others -- the show's thesis statement, found in the climactic number: "Love is a fighting word," which is certainly an ideology that we could use more of these days. - Leah Richards & John Ziegler

Add new comment

FRIGID Festival 2019

Leah Richards — Sun, 03 Mar 2019 16:55:41 +0000

FRIGID Festival 2019 Leah Richards March 3, 2019 - 11:55

Topics

Theater Review

Tags

FRIGID festival

It's time again for the annual FRIGID Festival, in its 13th year and the only theater festival in New York City in which all of the proceeds go to the artists themselves. The 2019 FRIGID Festival runs from February 20th to March 10th at the Kraine and IATI Theaters and, as always, has many more shows on offer than the small sampling that we will discuss here, so we encourage everyone to check out the full listing of productions on the FRIGID website, where you can also find the performance times and locations for all the shows. FRIGID faced the additional challenge this year of a last-minute relocation of a number of shows due to a burst pipe just before the festival opened, but, luckily for audiences, this formidable obstacle wasn't enough to stop these artists and the show will, in fact, go on.

The Gay Card

Written by Logan Martin-Arcand

Directed by Ed Mendez

Presented by SexualSpaceWalk Theatre at IATI Theater, NYC

February 20-March 5, 2019

The twentysomething whom we will know only by his screen name ColdPizzaSlice (Mitchell Kent Larsen) begins The Gay Card, written by Indigenous theater artist Logan Martin-Arcand, in a state of exposure, most of his clothing lying haphazardly on the stage. In a play that explores how its characters present themselves to others, especially online, why they put on particular personas, and how they more easily reveal flesh than feelings, his opening undress carries symbolic weight. ColdPizzaSlice, or CPS for short, as he himself suggests, describes himself as a longstanding hopeless romantic. CPS is finding it hard to date as a gay man and even harder to find love. Unexpected text messages from sometimes-date Fuck Boy (Torien Cafferata) after months of silence precipitate a "tipping point" for CPS, and he decides to download Grindr, which leads him to a date with Evan (Cafferata, doubling characters in another symbolically significant choice). Evan is younger and less experienced, and describes himself as "aggressively average"; he also explains that he is not on Grindr because he is a fan of the hook-up scene but because it is the only place that he feels he can be gay in his conservative small-town area, particularly since he doesn't enjoy bar culture. (Later, he and CPS discuss how many men only seem to be able to take pride in being gay in online contexts.) Unfortunately, while it seems like Evan and CPS should each be what the other is looking for, their date emphatically lacks a fairy-tale ending.

SexualSpaceWalk Theatre, a company based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, was founded in 2016 with "an emphasis on sharing the stories of marginalized people," and with The Gay Card, it does so not only entertainingly but also empathetically. The play expertly conjures the repetitive wasteland of blind dates and familiar faces on dating apps, but it also wisely spends time with each character's perspective, and lending each one depth in this way simultaneously functions as a larger commentary on the dating and sexual culture with which they struggle. Fuck Boy possesses much more complexity than his moniker would suggest, and both he and CPS must deal with some honest self-realizations as the play unfolds. As a result of the shifts in perspective, we see an enlightening repeat of the same text conversation with a very different tone on both sides, and we can and should also re-interpret another earlier, in-person exchange. Throughout all of this, Larsen and Cafferata are charming and believable, equally at home with the light humor of text-speak or filling out a dating profile and the deeply-felt intensity of romantic frustrations and emotional pain. The play depicts cycles of narcissism and what boils down to abusive behavior, but it balances these with self-examination and the possibility of fresh starts. Funny, perceptive, sad, hopeful, and sweet, The Gay Card should be on any festival-goer's agenda.

Sally, Hank, and Their Son Harry

Written by Manning Jordan

Directed by Daniella Caggiano

Presented at The Kraine Theater, NYC

February 20-March 10, 2019

During the first part of Manning Jordan's new play Sally, Hank, and Their Son Harry, the back wall of the stage is dominated by a poster for the 1968 comedy film Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows, the central conflict of which is between an older, more traditional Mother Superior and a young, modern nun during a cross-country road trip with a bus full of Catholic schoolgirls. Although the play divides itself between 1968 and 2017, its examination of love and sex primarily undercuts simple binaries in which more modern automatically means more permissive. Such complexity is suggested almost from the beginning, when the titular Hank (Sam Lanier) and Sally (Manning Jordan) talk with their married friends Gwen (Iliana Paris) and Jackson (Cesar Muñoz) about how involved they are in the church and how they have invited a priest to dinner in the lead-up to the two couples (ironically?) getting to know each other more Biblically. This encounter hits some snags, including Hank's focus on Jackson and the unexpected and unexplained disappearance of Harry's wet nurse Isadora (brought to memorably odd life by Simone Leitner); and the play jumps forward several decades to a "Sex Summit" at the 92nd Street Y on September 27, 2017 -- the day of Hugh Hefner's death, as stagehand for the event Grape (Jordan) helpfully notes. The adult Harry (Lanier), now a professor of human sexuality, married and with children, shares the panel with widely-published Francesca Sponamenti (Paris), who has a show on Netflix and is assertively, almost overbearingly open and frank about sexuality; similarly self-promoting podcaster Dr. Patricia Gorn (Leitner); and host Michael Tyler (Muñoz), whose skills as a moderator are certainly tested. (Pro tip: make sure to read the program inserts!)

The panel's Q&A allows it, and thus the play, to address infidelity, monogamy, what makes a good date or a good marriage or a good erotic movie, whether porn is a positive, and much more. Throughout the play, the action freezes periodically for extended asides that give the audience glimpses of the characters' backstories and inner monologues. Grape's story of meeting a romantic interest during her internship at the airport is particularly funny in both its writing and delivery, and Michael's creates a similarly funny contrast with his even-keeled demeanor as host. As the only cast member to play related characters, Lanier creates continuities between Hank, with his sometimes forced laughter and his orgy-specific NDAs, and the awkwardly earnest Harry, who comes at his human sexuality from an extremely academic angle, while keeping each a distinct character. The rest of the cast deliver strong performances as well, and while the play is foremost a fun, entertaining comedy with a light touch, Manning (both as a writer and performer) concludes on a very genuine note. Sally, Hank, and Their Son Harry posits that sexuaity is impacted by many factors, including but far from limited to history and family, to which end, perhaps, and to its credit, it doesn't spell out lines of cause and effect between its two segments. Of course, putting that trust in the audience would mean less if Sally, Hank, and Their Son Harry weren't also a swinging good time. - Leah Richards & John Ziegler