Asheville Fringe Arts Festival: Safe
Throughout this year’s Fringe, I’ve witnessed a number of different ways that performing artists have adapted to the virtual format. Some embraced it wholeheartedly and emphasized the unique capacities of the platform (#txtshow and Kaleidoscopic Bone House). Some have basically evolved their theatrical pieces into cinema (Basket Case: The Musical).
And then there’s a third option, which in some ways is the most obvious and in others the most radical: simply going forward with your intended production, in a real theater, like a real play, and filming it for YouTube or Zoom consumption.
This final path was chosen by the Italian theatre group FMG to present their intimate drama Safe. This one-person production starring Valeria Wandja is just like plays were in the Before Times. I could almost feel myself sitting in a quiet, darkened black-box theater watching Wandja perform. Almost.
Safe tells the story of Sister Daisy, a nun who is taking care of people during a devastating global pandemic. Her small mountaintop oasis is dwindling and she must use every ounce of her strength to keep going and maintain hope. Obviously, not too long ago, this show would have been a fantastical dystopia. Now, it’s a sober look at the world we are all actually living in.
Playwright Federico Maria Giansanti crafts an earnest, emotional script. Wandja plays a tormented Sister Daisy with great honesty and emotional depth. Daisy has no ulterior motive; she simply wants to keep her brood alive, therefore keeping her own spirit alive. She urgently prays to her God before a blood-red cross, increasingly angry at the miserable reality she is forced to live. One by one, she is stripped of her final remaining necessities: food, heat, and her companions themselves.
More than any other virtual theater I’ve seen this pandemic, Safe made me yearn to go back to a theater. This is a show that is quiet, intimate, emotional… it deserves to be seen in a space that is dark and immersive. Instead, I heard traffic outside my window and my cat insisted on crawling in front of my desktop. The truth is that in this case, the virtual format does take away from the experience of the show. If you get a chance to see Safe, I recommend drawing the curtains and putting the pets in a closet for its 60-minute duration. This one really deserves your full attention.
Obviously, few of us have had to endure during COVID the kind of hardship Sister Daisy suffers due to this unnamed pandemic. But as a metaphor for social isolation, economic hardship, and psychological distress, Safe definitely touches a nerve. The final, haunting lines of Sister Daisy’s monologue: “I can stay home… but will I stay safe?” is a powerful expression of the uncharted territory we are all exploring during this second pandemic winter.
The 2021 Asheville Fringe Arts Festival runs through Sunday, January 24. For a complete listing of shows, visit ashevillefringe.org
(Photo courtesy of Asheville Fringe)
