It Didn't Happen by Cauldron Theater Company
The best Asheville theater news I received all year was a few months ago, when I found out that Judy Calabrese was re-mounting It Didn’t Happen: An Erotic Odyssey, her incredible autobiographical show that premiered at the Asheville Fringe Festival last January. (You can read my original review, published as part of Asheville Stages’ “Fringe Dispatch” from January 24, here.)
Although the text is not significantly changed from its Fringe world premiere, the show is profoundly elevated by the different platform. The Tina McGuire black box theater within the Diana Wortham Performing Arts Center is a perfect venue for an intimate, minimalist, deeply original show like It Didn’t Happen, which happens to be the inaugural show for the nascent Cauldron Theater Company.
Calabrese’s piece, directed by Phillipe Andre Coquet, feels like a one-person show in many ways because it’s personal and utilizes a lot of direct address from Calabrese herself. But in fact the show benefits enormously from three talented co-stars — Tasha Pepi, Anna Slate, and Hallee Hirsh — who each play multiple women who affected Judy’s sexual transformation from an awkward closet-case to a sexually liberated polyamorous pansexual.
It all starts when Judy is seven years old and her anxious mother asks if she, like others in her kiddie ballet class, are “touching themselves.” Young Judy’s panicked lie begets a lifetime of denial and shame around her erotic desires. Some teenage fumblings with a friend, Naeva (Tasha Pepi), awaken Judy’s same-sex attraction but result in hurt feelings when Naeva denies anything ever happened.
Likewise, a graduate school hookup with a card-carrying women’s-studies-type lesbian (Anna Slate) makes Judy doubt her self-identified heterosexuality (and includes a bawdy, funny, and somehow sweet bit of finger-smelling business).
As Judy’s life progresses, she moves to Asheville, has kids, gets into a committed relationship with a man, Chris. But instead of her sexuality ossifying or normalizing, the exact opposite occurs. She enters a phase, around 2012 or so, where she fully embraces her queerness.
And it is here where It Didn’t Happen turns from one woman’s journey of sexual liberation into something much more expansive. She meets Hayden, a non-binary person whom Judy initially views as yet another chapter in her nascent lesbianism but who views their relationship as something deeper. Judy realizes that her sexual fantasies have real-world consequences.
The final “vignette” centers around Judy’s third pregnancy and the doula and friend who helps her see it through. This woman, Abbey (Tasha Pepi, the only one of the actors besides Judy who is a holdover from the original Fringe cast), goes from Judy’s doula to confidante to lover. They reach a level of physical and emotional intensity that seems to confirm Judy’s highest hopes for her sexual realization … until Abbey disconnects and it seems like Judy is back at square one.
Perhaps because this was my second time watching the show, or perhaps because additional text was added, I understood much better the meaning of the title It Didn’t Happen. The name refers to all of those sexual encounters that have been buried by time and social convenience: the summer camp experimentation, the wine-drunk night with a best friend, the one night stand your spouse will never know about. We may try to deny these encounters, but they did in fact happen, and whether we like it or not, they contribute to the fabric of our sex lives — indeed, our very lives themselves.
When I first wrote my review of this show, I somewhat glibly said It Didn’t Happen was “mandatory viewing for all Asheville lesbians.” But now I think that assessment is too narrow. It Didn’t Happen is required viewing for all Ashevillans who appreciate raw, funny, and profoundly vulnerable artistic expression.
No matter if you think about sex every seven seconds, or once a year on your birthday, Judy Calabrese fixes her gaze on the subject so cleverly, so humorously, so humanly, it will make anyone and everyone re-examine their own erotic odysseys — and what we’re all holding back.
It Didn’t Happen will be performed at 8 p.m. October 25 and 26 at the Tina McGuire Theatre at the Diana Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. For tickets and details, visit dwtheatre.com.
(Photo: Courtesy of Cauldron Theater Company.)
