A Love Vaccine: Believers by Patricia Milton

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One of my favorite writing subjects is myth and fairy tale adaptation. Robin Byrd, whose new play The Grass Widow’s Son is part of the DC Black Theatre Festival on 6/28/12, kindly blogged here about a talk that I gave on the topic at the Dramatists Guild National Conference last year.

Award-winning Bay Area playwright Patricia Milton has a new comedy opening in August in San Francisco titled Believers. It’s a fairy tale adaptation, and sounds fascinating—about a love vaccine. I interviewed Patricia via e-mail to learn more about her new show and her fairy tale adaptation process.

Q: Please tell us about your new play Believers. What’s it about?

Milton: In a remote pharmaceutical lab, brain researcher Rockwell Wise works to develop a love vaccine so he will never again suffer the pain of heartbreak. His ex-lover Grace Wright shows up to lead his drug development team, bringing her own agenda — her plan to create a love activator. Their maneuvers to achieve their own aims result in unexpected side effects.

Q: A love vaccine. What sparked the idea? How’d you come up with it?

Milton: I read an article in the NY Times about the brain synapses involved in romantic love, and was intrigued by the article’s assertion that if a love vaccine were made, there is already a large market for it. I immediately wanted to write about this: I think it is funny and touching to follow a protagonist whose desperate, heartfelt goal is totally wrong for her or him. I wanted to adapt a fairy tale as a couple’s backstory. I also was eager to explore the notion of pharmaceutical side effects. Brain-altering drugs are a boon for many people, but when their side effects are ignored or concealed, there are tragic results. In a similar way, sometimes our own actions produce unintended consequences that hurt the ones we love.

Q: Sounds like so many people can relate to this play! When did you start it and what’s your development process been like?

Milton: I’ve been working on it for about two years. I developed it in several writers workshops, including at Playwrights Foundation and Central Works writing group. It has had three public readings: at Playwrights Center of San Francisco, Playwrights Revolution, Capital Stage Company, Sacramento, and Wily West Productions, San Francisco. From the last reading, Wily West decided to produce it. As a side note, the Playwrights Revolution reading was directly as a result of Twitter: Stephanie Gularte, artistic director of Capital Stage, read my tweet about the play and asked to read it.

Q: That’s great that social media helped you get a reading. Speaking of readings, what’s their value in terms of a play’s development?

Milton: I learned so much from each reading. Believers is a comedy, so sitting in the middle of the theatre, listening for the laughter, told me a lot about what was working in terms of what was funny. The play explores a complex mash-up of ideas, and has an intricate plot, so I asked a lot of questions in talk-backs to make sure audiences were following the action. There’s still some juicy ambiguity, but the action has become clearer with each rewrite.

Q: Believers is based on a fairy tale. Please tell us about your fairy tale adaptation process.

Milton: Fairy tales are fascinating to me: layered, deep, and speaking directly to the unconscious. Many of the fairy tales we know here in the U.S. have been “Disney-ized,” removing some of the darker elements.  In “The Frog King,” a princess promises to love the Frog King forever and ever if he will rescue her gold ball from a pond. When he delivers the ball, she refuses to keep her promise. Now, many of us know a version where the princess kisses the frog to change him into a prince. But in the fairy story I found, the princess changes him by throwing the frog against a wall!  To me, this version is not about physical violence. It depicts the power of love to completely, often fiercely and uncomfortably, shatter our psyche as it transforms us. I was challenged to figure out how Grace “throws Rocky against the wall” to bring him to his fully realized self. One other aspect of the play is that the frog is both a religious symbol (as in Egypt’s plague) and a fairy tale symbol. I was prompted to explore the apocalyptic side of the frog as well as its fairy tale side.

Q: Any thoughts on writing comedy you can share with us?

Milton: I want to put in a good word for romantic comedies. For centuries, all comedies were romantic comedies. Hollywood, with its frequent use of stale formulas and generic couples, has somewhat tarnished the rom-com. I’m doing my part to reclaim the genre for smart people. I’d like to also make a plug for Wily West: a fantastic production company, employing talented women artists like our director, Sara Staley, Lead Designer Quinn Whitaker, and Executive Producer Laylah Muran de Assereto, as well as many other talented actors and design professionals. Founded by Morgan Ludlow, Wily West Productions produces only local SF Bay Area playwrights.

Q) A female-driven production company? We certainly want to support that. Thanks, Patricia, for all the good information. Congratulations and we can’t wait to hear more about your show.

Wily West Productions presents the world premiere apocalyptic comedy, BELIEVERS, by Patricia Milton, directed by Sara Staley. August 2-25, 2012. Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 8 p.m. at StageWerx, 466 Valencia Street, between 15th and 16th Streets, San Francisco. For more information: www.wilywestproductions.com 

 

Heading West with Paula Cizmar

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The new Tactical Reads venture, matching female playwrights with female directors, debuts Wednesday night, 6/27 (meet-up for networking/ideas at 7 p.m., reading at 8 p.m.). Award-winning playwright Paula Cizmar will launch the series, with her  play Strawberry, directed by Sabina Ptasznik, creator of this innovative reading series.

I’ve written about Paula Cizmar previously; there’s more about her life and extensive career on her website. Cizmar wrote a Guest Post for the LA FPI blog a few weeks ago about her May 2012 visit to Turkey, as one of  the authors of the internationally-acclaimed play Seven. I corresponded with Paula recently about her newest show.

Q: So you are the first playwright in the new Tactical Reads series with Strawberry. Congratulations! What’s this new play about?

Cizmar: Strawberry is about a young botanist, Anabel, who arrives in a remote section of the California growing fields to search for a plant that is believed to be extinct—at least that’s what she says.  But ultimately the play is about something else entirely—solving the mystery of her true identity, trying to connect with a birth mother she didn’t know she had, trying to connect with the land as a living entity, rather than as a scientific specimen.  And of course, it’s about love.

Q: What inspired you to write it?

Cizmar: Wind.  Ideas of extinction.  Agriculture.  Death.  Romantic notions. California. Typical! My inspirations come from a variety of places that float around and finally somehow land and form an idea.  This play followed the same odd path.  I was up near Soledad a while back, and got out of the car in a rural area—and the wind was unbelievable.  You could barely stand up in it. Unforgiving.  And then when I drive from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo County, where I live, it is impossible not to pass field after field of tomatoes, broccoli, and most of all, strawberries.  And these fields are often full of migrant workers, covered up in layers and layers of clothing to protect them from the sun, or the wind, or the pesticides, or the prickly plants.   I just read a statistic that strawberries have now passed marijuana as the number one money-maker crop in California.  It used to be marijuana, grapes, almonds—and now strawberries are at the top.   So the strawberry fields are ubiquitous, and you’d have to be driving with your eyes closed to not notice the pickers.  They’re bent over.  So I can’t help thinking about the people who harvest our food and the conditions they work under.  And then, I get nervous about global warming, about the future of the earth, and I know that in our own lifetime certain plant and animal species have disappeared from the planet.  Right now, biologists are trying to save the Gila trout, a small fish species that is being threatened by the wildfires in New Mexico.  I heard a researcher who was part of the rescue operation on NPR and he got choked up about this stuff—and so do I.  So listening to the news and crying in the car—that’s an inspiration.  And the West.  And heading West.  And then there’s the strawberry itself, red, heart-shaped.

Q: I love that you’re using the strawberry symbolically, too.  So when did you write it?

Cizmar: I started it last year [2011] and we did a cold reading of a very early—and quite different—draft of it at USC; Luis Alfaro put the reading together and after it was over he kept saying, ‘Somehow I keep going back to the notion of how carnal it is, how carnal the need of each character is, carnal, carnal, carnal.’ He repeated this word to me often enough that it finally made an impression! And I took a look at what he was talking about and realized that I had only touched on carnality—and should let it play out.  So that sparked a new approach to the play and took me on the road to the current version—which is entirely new, and this is a brand new draft of the new version.  So—it’s really never been seen by the public before and the reading will be the first testing ground.

Q: Do you think readings are valuable to a play’s development?

Cizmar: Just submitting a play for a reading sparks a certain amount of development—as the writer, you want the script to be coherent enough, enticing enough, you want it to show potential.  And then, the luxury of talking to the director about the play, just exchanging thoughts, comments, questions, sparks more development, and then the rehearsal process itself even more.  We playwrights work so often in isolation and there seem to be fewer readings to go around these days.   But ultimately, there’s only so much a playwright can do alone.  It could be a rationalization, it could be laziness—and I try not to fall into this trap and really try hard to get my plays to be as theatrical as possible on my own—but theatre is a collaborative medium, plays are to be performed, and playwrights need to be able to commune with other artists at a certain point in the writing.  A reading removes a play from where it’s lodged inside of the writer’s head and shoves it out into the world.  If you’re faithful and true, you listen to what’s going on in the rehearsal and reading process—and with any luck, the play grows a bit more.

Q: What do you think of the new Tactical Reads series, created by Sabina Ptasznik, and its mission to pair female directors with female playwrights?

Cizmar: Sabina not only has created a program where playwrights get to be in dialogue about a script with actors and a director in the rehearsal process, as you would in most readings, but also she has taken this program one step further: The pairing of female directors and playwrights. Simple, but brilliant. This is a very far-sighted approach; it’s about putting creative teams together, developing long-term relationships that can support imagination and process. We know that the big institutional theatres support specific playwrights—mostly male—through commissions and ongoing commitments to develop and produce their work. And of course with support, a writer’s work gets better—and is more likely to be produced.  So Tactical Reads is the no-budget grassroots version of that—creating artistic partnerships, facilitating communication, and ultimately, searching for opportunities.

Join us! Strawberry by Paula Cizmar, directed by Sabina Ptasznik, with Chuma Gault, Mariel Martinez, Meredith Wheeler. 8 p.m. on Wednesday, June 27, 2012, Atwater Crossing, 3245 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90039. Admission: Free.

AND there’s an LA FPI Meet-up before the reading, 7 p.m. We’ll meet at the ATX Kitchen near the wine bar.  Visit atwatercrossingkitchen.com for directions and to check out their cool menu. 

Taking Stock

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(Guest Blogger This Week – Laura A. Shamas, LA FPI Co-Founder and National Outreach Agent)

The Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative, as a grassroots movement dedicated to the cause of achieving gender parity for women playwrights (and all female theatre artists), has been around for awhile now. Inspired by the advocacy efforts by women playwrights in New York, Jennie Webb and I had our first conversation about it in September 2009 over lunch at the Marmalade Café on Ventura Blvd. In November 2009, we put up a temporary website, begged Ella Martin to head a study of L.A. female playwrights’ activities in the first decade of the 21st century, and tried to figure out how to organize a community-wide outreach to the hundreds of female dramatists here (and those who love them)—not an easy feat when you consider SoCal’s 500 square miles.  But we knew lots of people here cared about this issue and wanted to do something about it. We had our first official meeting in March 2010 at Theatricum Botanicum during a major storm; it seems like a metaphor, looking back. Still, many talented women and men trekked to Topanga Canyon during the torrential rain, and spoke from the heart about how and why this cause—and theatre as an art form—matters.

That initial wet chilly meeting seems like ancient history now; so much good work has happened in the past 2+ years. There’s a long list of artist-volunteers who have contributed to the LA FPI mission. Some highlights include: the creation of this website by Jennie Webb, sponsored by Katherine James; the award-winning staff of playwright-bloggers (Tiffany Antone, Erica Bennett, Nancy Beverly, Robin Byrd, Kitty Felde, Diane Grant, Jen Huszcza, Sara Israel, Cindy Marie Jenkins, Analyn Revilla, and Cynthia Wands) who are featured daily in this space, expertly managed by editor Robin Byrd; Ella Martin’s historic 2011 study results; Alyson Mead’s podcasts with inspiring women playwrights; the Women at Work Onstage page (still the only weekly list of female-authored shows in L.A.), created/maintained by Laurel Moje Wetzork; the bi-monthly e-mail blasts that include member news and submission opportunities, curated by Erica Bennett, then Helen Hill (we’re now looking for communication help!); the support from Larry Dean Harris, who wrote about us for The Dramatist—and gave us a spotlight, featuring Janice Kennedy, at a 2010 regional Dramatists Guild meeting (followed by a panel slot for us at 2011 National DG Conference); the new venture with Tactical Reads launching this week, connecting women playwrights to female directors, originated/helmed by Sabina Ptasznik; the spread of our badges on the Web and in person (a branding scheme with an important meme); an annual look at LORT seasons and stats in SoCal as related to gender parity and playwriting; the enthusiastic LA FPI support for female artists in the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2011 & 2012 (lead by Cindy Marie Jenkins, Jennie Webb, Jan O’Connor, Alyson Mead, Kat Primeau, and Jessica Abrams); sharing scenes via social media in order to increase accessibility and visibility; approaching theaters to ask how we can build relationships, fostered by Debbie Bolsky and Tami Tirgrath; meet-ups to see plays by women, coordinated by Task Force leader Diane Grant; online discussions, such as the fascinating one just hosted by Cindy Marie Jenkins with guests Etta Devine and Carolyn Sharp, about applying the Bechdel Test to the stage—a streamed broadcast that may (fingers crossed!) evolve into an ongoing monthly LA FPI/TV theatre conversation; etc. We have more people following us on Twitter, domestically and worldwide, than ever before. Lots of folks “Like” us on Facebook. And it’s all been created and executed by volunteers of professional theatre artists, for free!

Whew!

But has anything really changed? “Has LA FPI made any difference at all?” It’s a question I’m frequently asked and asking. When we compiled the SoCal LORT stats in May/June this year, for a while it looked as if there might be small gains of +1.5% or even +3.5%, in terms of female-authored shows for the 2012-2013 professional seasons. But then, in the end, it was pretty much the same as it ever was: still around 22% (or slightly less). Discouraging! “Is consciousness-raising effective anymore?” we wonder. Why doesn’t the excellent LA FPI blog have more commenters, at the very least?

In these moments, I have to remind myself: Statistics don’t tell the whole story—only part of it. Things have changed in this way: we are not sitting around and ignoring “the problem” any more. We were cautioned in the early days of LA FPI not to confuse “Activity” with “Progress.” Maybe not, but when you have this much ongoing work towards a goal (see above), there’s a shift of some sort—of attitude, of creativity, of focus, of opportunity, of spirit. It may take many more years before we achieve true gender parity for female theatre artists in the English-speaking theatre (or for women in the world at large). But we’re pretty sure that more Angelenos are aware of the issue and are working towards the goal of parity now. Solved? No. Better? Definitely.

Female theatre artists in New York continue to advocate for gender parity; the 2012 Lilly Awards held on June 4, 2012, at Playwrights Horizons, and the upcoming “We Are Theatre” protest on September 24, 2012, at the Cherry Lane Theater (organized by the Guerrilla Girls On Tour!, 50/50 by 2020, Occupy Broadway, and the Women’s Initiative members of the Dramatists Guild) are two timely examples.

Recent reports from the U.K. and Australia also mirror our struggles. Lyn Gardner, writing from London in The Guardian in February 2012, wonders if a universal blind submission policy is a possible remedy. A new report, “Women in Theatre,” released April 2012 by the Australian Council for the Arts, details the status of Australian women playwrights and female theatre artists. Those who authored the report found “no progress over the decade since 2001 and there is evidence that the situation for women in creative leadership deteriorated over that time” (pps 4-5). It’s a thorough, well-crafted study, and on page 49, there’s a “cross-sectoral approach” that suggests three pathways towards improvement in the professional theatre arena:

1) Information
2) Accountability
3) Vigilance

These points really resonated with us because they align with so much of our LA FPI work thus far. And it’s reassuring to know that others in the arts, including the Australian Council, recognize that the problem of gender parity in theatre is a grave one and must be remedied.

Here’s our promise. We will continue to spread the word; we are taking stock. And of this you can be certain: we won’t give up.


What are your ideas about how to create equal opportunities for women playwrights and female theatre artists? Join us on Wednesday, June 27, 7 p.m., for our next LA FPI gathering to share ideas and network, followed by an 8 p.m. reading of Paula Cizmar’s new play Strawberry, directed by Sabina Ptasznik in the new Tactical Reads program. And please share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

 

The Bechdel Test for the Stage

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Today I invited Etta Devine and Caroline Sharp to talk with me about the Bechdel test, how it affects their film viewing and careers, then see how it can be modified for plays.  This topic came up when I was trying to codify my reactions to some of the female characters I’ve seen on stage recently. We’ll talk starting at 1pm, and you can watch here (a video will be embedded before the start time) or on You Tube. Updates will be sent via @LA_FPI as well. Please join us and ask questions!

 

Here is a great introduction to the Bechdel Test:

Beyond the Bechdel Test: how do LGBT characters fare?

“The ‘Bechdel Rule,’ Defining Pop-Culture Character”. All Things Considered (National Public Radio).

That Old Black Magic on the Fringe

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If there is anyone who deserves the term woman on the fringe, it’s Jacquetta Szathmari. I’ve known her since the first year of Fringe, and she is one of my favorite artists to see every year. First she brought the storytelling to stage piece That’s Funny, You Didn’t Sound Black on the Phone. By the way, she never utters those words in her show. This year she’s workshopping a new piece about a burlesque dancer and magician who meet in 1955 on the train to Vegas. Both female, both African-American, and both pursuing their dreams even as they must stick to the “Chitlin Circuit”. Let me just say that you’ve never thought about history more than watching a burlesque Harriet Tubman dance. More is below from the audience reaction/review I posted.

Watching this show, I found myself suspended somewhere between a guffaw and gasp of horror the entire time. Szathmari has an insane ability to draw you into these incredibly different characters’s greatest desires, teach some history and give a really good yank at your guts. A work-in-progress, I couldn’t stop thinking about it for hours afterwards, and honestly still don’t feel like I have fully digested it. It was such a great meal that I plan to go back for seconds.

I strongly suggest you see this show, and in true form to its setting of Vegas, have a stiff drink or two beforehand.

fringey females

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I started an experiment this Hollywood Fringe Festival: live broadcast interviews via Google+. You can watch them live on Bitter Lemons , You Tube or Google+, and each is archived for later, too.

Here is a selection of female-helmed Fringe shows who I got a chance to interview. I decided to start with pieces that pass a modified version of the Bechdel test*; essentially, the subject matter does not revolve around men and relationships. I don’t have a problem with those topics, and they can be very interesting, but there is plenty else out there.

*The Bechdel test is meant for film, so the three criteria are: 1) more than 1 female characters (with names), 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something besides men. For plays, specifically some that are only one woman on stage, I modified the definition. It’s still up for discussion, but that’s the best I could create after a lengthy twitter discussion on the topic.

More will be posted soon along with personal commentary on the state of female characters………

 

An Evening with Marie Curie: Rogue Scientist

This one is sort of cheating, because it specifically deals with challenges of a female scientist. Yet not cheating, because she breaks the mold (or at least tries). I’m seeing it this Thursday!

Ciera Payton on her show Michael’s Daughter

Her story centers around her parents, including an incarcerated father, but she also portrays other women who discuss much more than that. One character includes Marie Laveau, and from talking with her, it seems like New Orleans herself is a character.

 

Naomi Bennett, director of Tearing the World Apart

What will it take for you to actually change your life and overall purpose?

…..And that’s it. Out of 35 + interviews, those are the four I can distinguish are not solely about men and a female’s relationship to them. This is not a judgement call, and I am seeing some wonderful shows that revolve around relationships. I just find it very interesting and something to consider. What do you think?

THE WOMEN OF TU-NA HOUSE at The Hollywood Fringe

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Less than a week ago I was a Fringe virgin, tentatively taking my seat as I prepared to see a show about elementary school crushes and Hallmark Valentines stamped Return to Sender. Four shows later, I can almost call myself a savvy Fringer, flashing my badge and glibly leafing through my press packet as I wait for the curtain to go up.

How fitting, then, that my latest — and last — blog subject is a one-woman show about women who are highly skilled at the art of love — or rather, satisfying men.  Nancy Eng’s THE WOMEN OF TU-NA HOUSE is a moving and at times heart-crushing show about the workers at an Asian massage parlor that doubles (not-so-secretly) as a brothel.  From the madam whose constancy lands her a brownstone in New York to the worker who can’t stop crying after her cat dies (and whose tears earn her a generous tip), the stories are moving and gritty and real.

Too real for the not-so-savvy Fringers out there?  Not at all: interspersed with stories of desperation and truncated hopes is humor.  Lots of it.  As a matter of fact, Nancy Eng manages to weave so much wit into these women’s yarns that we almost see these characters as friendly aunts, dispensing age-old advice on men and sex and life.  Never mind how they arrived at it, their vista from the baser level of human existence earns them a certain wisdom that asks — demands — us to take note.

And we do.  How can we not?  In addition to being a deft storyteller, Eng is a skilled actress, a chameleon as she moves from one character to the next.  She has quite a few up her sleeve, but each one feels new.  Unlike her characters’ encounters, there’s no wham-bam repetition in these characters or their tales.

In the end, just like the Tu-Na House customers, everyone — sophisticated and naive Fringers alike — will leave feeling satisfied.

SO MUCH TO CELEBRATE!

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When I first saw the title of Jackie Loeb’s one-woman extravaganza at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, I had my reservations. What the frack does this woman have to celebrate? Aren’t one-woman shows supposed to be about angst and rejection and recovery from eating disorders?  I jest, but that’s kind of what mine’s about…  I was further confused by the cover photo on the Fringe listing: Jackie wearing a mix of coy surprise (little old me?) and elation, her hair blown back (it, too, is surprised and elated).  Who is this saucy Aussie and what the hell is she kvelling over?

Glad you asked.  Jackie Loeb doesn’t just have a one-woman show.  Jackie Loeb IS a one-woman show.  She sings — by that I mean, one minute you’re hearing Aretha being channeled through this blonde, bob-wearing gal from down under, the next, Maria Callas.  She plays guitar.  The piano, neglected for the first half of the show was put to awe-inspiring use once she sat down at it.  She tells jokes and funny stories.  The woman has so much talent it’s sick.

The celebration part?  Let’s just say much of it centers around her recent move to L.A.  As you can imagine, Jackie has a few things to say about… oh, let’s see… the freeways, the culture, the use of the word “adjacent” to denote a not-so-great neighborhood that happens to be in the same time zone as a nice one.  Jackie just seems to get this city in such a fresh way it reminded me of my own culture shock when I first moved here.  And when I say “fresh”, I mean both new and sassy.

Oh, and turning forty — that, too, is fodder, particularly her rendition of Billy Joel’s “She’s Always A Woman”.  Obviously the words have been changed to protect the innocent, but it’s such sheer genius you completely forget what Billy was singing about in the first place.

Yes, Jackie Loeb — there is a Santa Claus and yes,  you do have so much to celebrate (exclamation point).

SO MUCH TO CELEBRATE! plays June 23rd and 24th at the Asylum Theatre.

After This I’ll Shut up (And Dance)

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Walking up the steep set of stairs to get to one of the wonderfully informal gems tucked away off LA’s Theatre Row known as the Complex Theatres, I was reminded of my days as a dancer in New York, ascending to some ragtag rehearsal space on or near Forty-Second Street (pre-Disney whitewash).  The elevator was always broken, the stairs required more muscle power than the dancing itself, and God forbid you touched the railing for all the decades of germs that lurked. But once you got inside the studio, it was like entering a technicolor world where the sheer joy of dance managed to drown out the sirens, the horns and the urine smell down below (not to mention money and boyfriend woes).

That was a long-winded way of saying that upon entering Stella Valente’s world, I was transported in much the same way.  Valente, an actress, comedienne and dancer, tells of her lifelong game of hide-and-seek with herself in her one-woman show, SHUT UP AND DANCE. From the mob-fringed world of Queens, to spicy Miami, to Buenos Aires where she learned to tango and ultimately to L.A., Stella makes anyone whose trajectory has been a series of impulsive exits off the Interstate of life feel in very good company.

Especially if you also happen to be someone for whom those exits came in the form of a grand jete.  Stella loves to dance, and she does it beautifully.  She also masterfully combines the high-art of beautiful movement with a down-and-dirty expose on her life and loves.  Her characters are hilarious: I never wanted her mother to leave (full disclosure: I’m working on a one-woman show myself, with a character much like her mother.  Now I’m wondering if it can be a two-woman show with Stella playing that part?).  But the character that comes through the strongest is Stella herself and her love of dance.  Because no matter what happens, dance is always a part of her life.  It’s a metaphor for the different challenges she faces, a mirror gently reminding her of the aspects of her personality that could use just a tad bit of tweaking.

It made me miss those New York days, condemned buildings and all.

SHUT UP AND DANCE plays 6/17 and 6/24 at The Complex Theatre in Hollywood.

CRUSHED at The Hollywood Fringe Festival

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I have a confession to make: until last night I was a fringe festival virgin.

Year after year I’d drive past the tent, see the sign, hear about the shows.  In a way it felt like a big block party.  A block party filled with people on Ecstasy.  Even if it was right outside my door, it still felt weird to crash it, like I needed one of the more sober people to actually insist I come.  In the case of the Hollywood Fringe Festival, I got such an invitation when I was asked to be a guest blogger.  So last night I popped my Fringe cherry.

I use this analogy in part because Kiersten Lyons’ one-woman show CRUSHED deals with this very concept and more. Lyons originally told the story of the various men who rejected her, starting with Han Solo and moving on from there, as a pilot; but it’s hard to imagine the show without Lyons in the flesh recounting it.

Moving from a clothesline of paper hearts to a transparency projector to the various “places” she conjures up so well, Lyons makes the audience feel like she’s a long-lost girlfriend and we’re catching up on events that transpired since we parted ways at age six.  She’s funny and affable and self-aware; she also did the amazing thing of making me remember the look on Marc Tetelle’s face when, in eighth grade, I told him I liked him and how Neal Barry and I kissed after the Sadie Hawkins dance (my first!) which led to his ignoring me for the next two years.

My own romantic pitfalls aside, Kiersten Lyons’ lead her — and, ultimately us — to a place of hope and surprise and comfort.  Let me share this with you,  she implies.  Help me tell my story.  She even says this, in not so many words, to the audience directly.

I think that’s what makes the Fringe so special.  It’s a chance for audience and performers alike to collaborate in an intimate storytelling process.  A chance to experience the moment together.

A chance to feel like you really belong at the party.

CRUSHED plays at the Underground Theater June 15 and 16 and June 21 through June 23rd.