FRIGID Fringe Festival 2023 (Part 3)
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.
Kingfish
Off the side of a simple yet effective boat set a man is peeing the “last couple drops”. An aggressively nasty tone begins the adventure called Kingfish. Two men are seemingly strangers on this fishing boat. Despite the unfamiliarity trash talking is abundant. One man is “talking smack” about another man’s wife. Where is this boat headed?
J.J. Williams is the “best bass fisherman the game has ever seen”. He enters a mixed tournament where anyone might be assigned as your partner. J.J. has the unfortunate luck to have Scratch on board. His character is best described as an obnoxious overweight insulting pig of a manchild. Even more concerning is that Scratch is Satan.
Satan collects souls in Mason jars and has every intention of adding to his cache today. Arguments ensue. J.J. realizes “it’s tough to be a good boy when it’s just you and the devil”. The premise is fun, the horns are funny and the tale nicely transitions into a fishing contest for one’s soul. “When I win maybe I won’t flay you right off the bat” hints at the occasional amusing tone.
The trip stretches over a period of time leading J.J. to wonder if hell simply is a never ending fishing trip with the devil. Even more danger lurks in the water. The storyline enters an unruly whirlpool of sorts and the plotline becomes a bit muddy. Winning random references like “Fuck Charlie Daniels” keep the mood light but a consistently darker tone might make this a creepy scary parable. After all, Satan remarks, Jesus told us to “go forth and be a fisher of men”.
A Scar is Born
Lorelei Zarifian is admittedly “intoxicated by the sound of words”. Her “stand up tragedy” A Scar is Born places this “word addict” at an audition for a theatrical film in Orlando. How big a word freak you ask? “I snort thousands and thousands of words”. The show begins in an intriguingly quirky manner.
Through a series of songs and sketches Ms. Zarifian will review her life experiences to this unseen casting director. Some of the wordplay is very entertaining. “Suddenly I saw the silhouette of my fiancé/ Had no time to finish my crème brûlée”. She wears a sign “Stop Bad Bread” pronouncing the American equivalent “a bad joke”. In France, bread is four simple ingredients. Here the package lists twenty one including enriched flour. “Enriched with what?” is the amusing aside.
The audition takes us on her personal journey from Marseilles to Paris to New York and ultimately to Florida where the homeowner’s association creates a never ending series of new restrictions. The moral of the Manhattan segment is “it costs an arm and a leg to be a foreigner”. The revelations are a mixed bag. There are many songs sung throughout. While nicely rendered, they tend to illuminate the fragmentary structure of this show rather than help it coalesce.
At the end of the audition she receives a priceless call back from Netflix. They love the idea but just want to “make slight changes”. Those are funny. None more so than asking her to change her role from poet to prostitute. A Scar is Born might have a few boo-boos but there is definitely wit and heart within its storyteller’s continual reaching for that elusive dream.
Syncope
“Join celebrated storyteller Will Clegg on his lifelong journey with marijuana and panic disorder! Hijinks ensue!” That is the description and punctuation found online for Syncope. While factually accurate, it does not begin to hint at the engrossing seriousness of this exceptionally well told memoir.
The show begins with a fairly typical scenario. The father of a teenage boy finds a bag which is “either spices for spaghetti sauce or weed”. Apparently Mr. Clegg was not quite the goody two shoes imagined. He grows to love smoking pot. “Everything I was worrying about melted away”. This evolution gets him through middle school and eventually studying filmmaking at Columbia University.
There are attempts to cut back. Never smoke before class is a mantra. Then the punchline arrives. “But I can skip class.” There is an effortless conversational ease in Mr. Clegg’s presentation but there is no shortage of vivid imagery or details. Living in a shoebox in the East Village he warns “whatever you’re imagining, it’s smaller than that”.
A few events give pause. One time waking up in the bathtub with no idea how long he had been there. The year 2003 with its pile of upsetting news. Real concerns about life, career, relationships and substance excesses. Anxiety issues. Paranoia. Am I having a heart attack? Mr. Clegg candidly and expertly dives deeper and deeper into how he discovered the real antidote to anxiety.
This cathartic trail of foibles, both humorous and also a tad frightening, contains a bit of scientific information as well. I now know the terms micturition and gelastic syncope which relate to temporary losses of consciousness due to a fall in blood pressure.
There is much to admire in Syncope as a piece of theater. Perhaps more valuable, however, is hearing about a well traveled road to gaining confidence. We can all use a dose of self-actualization now and then. “I was able to be present and just enjoy it all” concludes Mr. Clegg. From my seat I was happily present for Syncope and just enjoyed it all immensely.
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.