More Sara

A few more thoughts about Sara Felder's show at Dell'Arte (see post below), now that more time has passed and the show has closed, so I won't be spoiling it for anyone.

In general, it's kind of amazing that a show that features a self-announced Lesbian, talking about Israel and Palestine, as well as her blind mother, turns out to be so non-threatening. That's largely due to Felder's personality, her performance (juggling and shadow plays fascinate everyone on a non-verbal, non-ideological level), the play itself (which dances around the tough issues rather than confronting them, though it authentically portrays a personal engagement) and in part to the audience.

Lesbians and gay men participate in the North Coast community and are generally accepted as valued members of the community. This is especially true among politically active people, who often support Lesbian and gay causes, and among theatregoers. Felder attracts a specifically gay and Lesbian contingent among her audience, and she did something pretty skillful and interesting: she played to them for a moment, and simultaenously used them to build a joke. In character, she responds to what she thinks is an accusation by an old friend, now an orthodox rabbi in Israel, about "her kind." She goes into a rant defending her coming out as a Lesbian at 16, her pride in being Lesbian, etc., to shouted encouragement and cheers from the audience. Which all contributes to the joke when it turns out the friend wasn't referring to her homosexuality at all. By "her kind" he meant secular Jews.

There is also another particular bit of Felder's showmanship (or does that have to be showomanship?) I've been thinking about. A few times early in the show she picked up one of three large knives, the kind we've seen jugglers juggle (in my case, in the safety of a television audience.) But she doesn't do anything with them. Still, they are the equivalent of showing a gun--the stage rule is that by the end of the play, that gun must go off.

Later she hands the knives to someone in the front row. Later still, after we've presumably almost forgotten about them, she is teetering on a balance board rolling back and forth over a round object, beginning to juggle lemons. She drops them. Though her juggling has at times appeared supernatural, she has flubbed once or twce, so that's what this looks like. She covers as if she's screwed up. The lemons are on the floor, when she calls for something else to juggle--and the young man in the front row hands her the knives. Which she juggles while balancing, to wonderment and applause.

The moment has been carefully prepared by the hints and expectations earlier. And if dropping the lemons wasn't intentional, it should now forever be so. Because seeing those lemons on the stage upped the ante for what is already a dangerous bit of juggling. Very skillfully done.

Sara Felder at Dell'Arte

I just saw Sara Felder's show, Out of Sight in the Carlo Theatre at Dell'Arte, the Friday night performance. It's as she says in the mini-interview below, a comedy with content. Although the show is still "in process", it's already got a symmetry and an impact. And she sure can juggle! There's wit and emotion, and an audience-friendly ninety minute running time. Everybody had a good time tonight.

She's obviously a veteran performer, present with a presence, and tonight's audience was totally present and on top of things as well. Not just with laughter and gasps at the juggling, which is balletically lovely at times as well as wondrously skilled, but with audible responses to her words, sometimes simply in recognizing the metaphors and symmetries of the piece.

I was fortunate enough to sit beside a couple of brothers (I assume) of grade school age, wearing red hockey shirts. One of them exclaimed each time he got a passing reference in the shadow play--he recognized the one eye over the other joke about modern art--"Picasso!" And when the chicken warned the sky was falling, "that's Chicken Little!" "There's a Greek myth about flying too close to the sun!" Smart kid, smart audience. Good time.

I had emailed Sara Felder some questions for my Stage Matters column in the North Coast Journal, but she's been on tour and didn't get back to me until after the paper had gone to press. Bob Doran posted this at his Humblog, but I thought I'd post it here as well.

What's your show about? What will we see?

Out of Sight is a vaudevillian's attempt to understand both her mother and the Israel/Palestine crisis. To do so, she revisits how her mother became blind -- by staring at a solar eclipse as a child -- and her own visit to Israel in the 80's. It's a comedy with content.

When did you write this show? Is this the first performance?

Out of Sight was commissioned by the National Performance Network and premiered in Spring 2006 at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia. It has since been performed at the WomenSpeak Festival in Harrisburg, PA. This is its third venue. It usually takes me about a year of touring before the show settles in, so I very much consider these performances in Blue Lake as part of my process of creating the show.

What's your background? Where are you from, etc?

I'm from a little shtetl in Brooklyn called Brighton Beach. I lived in San Francisco for 20 years before my partner got in the crazy notion to go to rabbi school. We moved, with our son, to Philadelphia three years ago and are counting the days (many) till we can return to the holy land of San Francisco. Or somewhere relatively close to San Francisco. Or at least in the same time zone.

Prior relationship to Dell'Arte or the North Coast?

Arcata was a favorite stop of the Pickle Family Circus when I was with them in the early '80s.
I also brought my solo play, "June Bride: the story of a traditional Jewish lesbian wedding" to the Mad River Festival in, gosh what year was that? (8 years ago or so??). Then I brought my next show here too: "Shtik: a queer play on Jewish vaudeville" about 4 years ago. It's wonderful here. I love Dell'Arte, the redwoods, the bagels.

Where did you learn to juggle? How much is that part of your show here?

I learned to juggle in college at U.C.L.A. in the late 70's. Juggling is my best voice in theater work. I love using objects and circus in metaphorical ways. In this show there is mucho mucho mucho juggling. In fact, the whole show is a balancing act between trying to understand "my mother's Israel" which was created to protect Jews from antisemitism and the tragic consequences of creating a country in a place inhabited by a native population. Yes, there's three ball (actually three lemon) juggling, contact juggling, glow-in-the-dark juggling, devil sticks, scarves and knives. And for the first time, I also do a bit of shadow puppets to tell the story of my mother's blindness - shadows to tell the story of shadows.

Out of Sight continues with shows at 2pm and 8pm Saturday July 8 and 8pm Sunday July 9 at Dell'Arte in Blue Lake.