one-person show

IndyFringe: The Barn Identity

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By John Lyle Belden

“The Barn Identity,” by Erika MacDonald, is about falling-down barns.

It might seem like it’s about children’s games, the leaf-circle dance, the Fourth of July feeling, bringing the outside in, her mystery illness, or that night she stood on the sidewalk with 5 percent of her brain – How many times has she told this story? – but she insists, it’s about falling-down barns.

MacDonald gently brings a kaleidoscope of storytelling fragments into focus as we dive into her world of seven-year-old Old Ladies in snowy beds and bent old structures that you wonder how they still stand. Her view out the window, and looking within, take us on a fascinating journey that is both deeply personal, and the essence of a great Fringe performance.

And why she doesn’t go to movies. And how she’s obsessed with falling-down barns.

Wonderful to the last “theatre sigh,” with recorded music by fellow Fringe performer Paul Strickland, “The Barn Identity” has performances 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 27, and Thursday and Sunday evenings, Sept. 1 and 4, in the Athenaeum.

IndyFringe: Scars, by Sears

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By John Lyle Belden

One of the benefits of the Fringe festival format is that it allows performers to work on new and developing material. It gets a sort of dress rehearsal before an audience who bought inexpensive tickets to be part of the process, rolling with the technical glitches and jumbled lines, seeing the genius at work behind the eventual polished product.

Lissa Sears, a standup comic who has more worldly experience than most who picked up the mic only a few years ago, is developing her one-person show, “Scars” over the course of this year’s IndyFringe. Wendy saw a lot of potential in its first-ever presentation last weekend, and what I saw last night shows something truly special and inspiring in the making, and I encourage you to be part of the process.

Being a very out-and-proud lesbian is about the most ordinary thing about Sears. The first “scar” was internal, the onset of multiple sclerosis at age 25, temporarily paralyzing one side of her body. In her discomfort, she says she had rather it be cancer, which can be cut out. “Be careful what you wish for.”

As she approaches 40, a lump in her breast has her seeking “a girly doctor” and entering chemotherapy, and eventually surgery. Still, “you gotta embrace the suck, or the suck will embrace you.”

Throughout her journey, she defies any weakness in her body by taking up boxing, martial arts and distance running, even doing the Indy Mini Marathon with a walker. A chance encounter with performer and former Colts kicker Pat McAfee has her trying out and enjoying standup. She meets other celebrities, including the late Louie Anderson.

Removal of her breasts means she can go topless (though she’d rather not show her belly). This also leads her to the “flattie” community and more opportunities to spread a message of pride and empowerment.

Her personal motto is, “Don’t tell me I can’t,” and I wouldn’t dare say that of this constantly improving showcase of her ongoing brave life. Help a feisty, funny woman as she focuses her story, Saturday afternoon, Aug. 27, and Friday night and Saturday evening, Sept. 2-3, at the Athenaeum.

IndyFringe: Leland Loves Bigfoot

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By John Lyle Belden

Last year, standup comic and Kentucky hippie Stewart Huff asked: Do jokes still work? Well, his do.

In this year’s one-man show, “Leland Loves Bigfoot,” he revisits some of that material, but has a new central anecdote, his night with a stranger waiting for a cryptid to show up.

As he looks for that sweet spot “between chaos and capitalism,” he recommends going to a snake-handling church for entertainment rather than a major theme park. He disagrees with fellow liberals saying we can’t fix what’s wrong with America, “but WILL we fix things?” he shrugs. And he decries insults taking the place of debate, “I dream of the day we have an (actual) argument.”

And he relates his visit to the little town of Mays Lick, Ky. While drinking at the local redneck bar, he is approached by a man who asks if Huff would like to go with him to his farm and look for Bigfoot.

Against his better judgement, he goes.

While they sat outdoors in lawn chairs drinking moonshine, Huff realized, “I love Leland. But I’m afraid of Leland, because he votes.” As they discuss vaccines, Scooby-doo, condemned statues, and nude driving, he maintains a brotherly affection for the man despite not agreeing with anything he says.

And that’s the main point, if there must be a moral to an incredibly funny show, that we can disagree with someone without hating them.

His energetically delivered observations elicited constant laughter and some devious thoughts, such as, “if you see someone in old-time aviator goggles, follow him” because something crazy is about to happen.

“You don’t goggle-up in the planning stages.”

Plan to see Huff at the Athenaeum, 8:45 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27-28.

IndyFringe: Exes and Embryos

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By John Lyle Belden

Standup comedian Mandee McKelvey (who brought us last year’s “How I Got My Warts Prayed Off”) returns with a new hour of comedy that’s a bit discomforting and roll out of your seats hilarious.

An out-of-the-blue inquiry by a distant friend – would Mandee like to take her extra frozen embryo? – sparks a rather twisty train of thought that includes 15 solid minutes of ranting about semen (using the more common crude word that sounds like a verb). If you can manage that, she also talks about her abortion.

For mature audiences with mature minds who don’t mind some crude humor, this is a must-see. McKelvey’s frank and upbeat delivery (“just trying to find lightness in the darkness”) will win you over. Learn how IVF is like an expensive carnival game, and that standup comedy is not “family friendly” from the comic’s perspective.

Performances are Friday and Saturday evenings, Aug. 26-27, and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, Sept. 3-4, on the Indy Eleven stage at the IndyFringe Theatre.

IndyFringe: The Princess Strikes Back

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By Wendy Carson

Victoria Montalbano had an awkward childhood, growing up as a theater nerd with very little romantic experience. Suddenly her life is changed forever when the “Star Wars Trilogy” is rereleased and plays in her local theater. Since there is only one woman in the entire movie, she naturally identifies herself as Princess Leia and falls madly for the “scruffy nerf-herder” of a rogue, Han Solo.

After college she moves to Chicago to become the next Tina Fey. Her exceptional improv skills aside, few acting opportunities provide themselves for her. Still, she remains ever hopeful that her leading man will find her, and she will eventually star in the story of her dreams.

As one might conclude from the show’s full title, “The Princess Strikes Back: One Woman’s Search for the Space Cowboy of her Dreams,” her co-star has yet to be cast. Still, the tales she tells of her personal and professional ups and downs are delightful to hear. Besides, if you don’t attend, you won’t learn the correlation between virginity and pumpkin pie.

The Force compels you to attend 7:15 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 25 and/or noon Saturday, Aug. 27, at the District Theatre.

IndyFringe: Experi-Mental

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By John Lyle Belden

Mentalist Steven Nicholas provides an interesting hour of entertainment and surprises in “Experi-Mental.”

Nicholas is apparently one of those extraordinary humans who can memorize a great deal of written information. It started, he says, when he was the slowest in his grade-school class because he thought through every math problem too thoroughly. To aid his scores, he worked on his memory, and now has thousands of digits of Pi locked in his head – this is not a boast, he is nowhere near the record.

Still, he can demonstrate that practically any grouping of numbers can be found in that famous irrational sequence. Also, he claims he can unlock the memory potential of audience members, using only 52 numbers – each written on a different playing card of a standard deck.

This opens us to some mentalist tricks that deliver the “wow” factor, and in a different way than other magician/mind-readers at this year’s Fringe.

Also, if you attended the preview show, he’s the guy who had us all touch our fingers against our will. He’ll do it again – how long can you resist?

Go “mental” with Nicholas at the Athenaeum, Friday and Sunday evenings, Aug. 26 and 28, and Friday and Saturday, Sept. 2-3.

IndyFringe: Sadec 1965, A Love Story

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By Wendy Carson 

A brilliant storyteller, Flora Le spins the tale of “Sadec 1965: A Love Story,” her quest to discover her father’s hidden past in Vietnam prior to his arrival in Canada, where he attended college and married her mother.

Le’s relationship with her father was never great. He left the family when she was five. During her bi-weekly forced visitations she was neglected and abused. He refused to tell her anything about him, his family or Vietnam, no matter how much she asked.

This lack of a male touchstone in her life led her to make some poor and questionable choices along the way. However, her friend convinces her that the only way she will truly learn about the man is to visit Vietnam for herself. So, she leaves her soul-sucking job and goes upon a motorcycle tour of the country.

She proudly buys herself a beautiful motorcycle, disregarding the fact that she has never ridden on, let alone driven one. She is excited to see the foreign land, disregarding that she only knows approximately three phrases in Vietnamese. Still, she valiantly forges ahead.

Her discoveries throughout the countryside are interspersed with memories of her father. When he is struck down by a brain tumor, she visits him in the hospital but his treatment of her has not changed since she was a child. In fact, she only learns of her father’s past from interviews of the Vietnamese man her brother hired to sit by her father’s bedside.

Through him she finds out about her father’s first love, whom he left behind. She pledged herself to be faithful and wrote him over six hundred letters during a span of about six years. This devotion makes Le desperate to meet the mysterious woman, but will that connection actually be made?

Le’s story is raw and lovely as she pulls no punches regarding anyone’s faults (especially her own). However, the tapestry she weaves is engaging and beautiful and hopefully there will be another opportunity if you missed viewing it during the opening weekend of IndyFringe.

Flora Le’s story continues on her website, containing photos of those involved as well as some of the letters written. Check it out at https://www.sadec1965.com/

IndyFringe: Ron Popp is a Responsible Adult

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By Wendy Carson

This is Ron Popp’s third show at IndyFringe and sadly it is his last, at least for a while. His keen observational humor, though, is still as sharp as ever.

He discusses various issues that resonate today such as aging (“I feel like I walked onto the set of ‘Cocoon’”); sensible gun laws (“even Chekhov had a three-act waiting period”); the state of our country (“we have racism, sexism – community productions of ‘Equus’”); and so much more.

We learn about his life during COVID, surviving the ‘90s, getting a new therapist, and being too gay to get cast in “The Wizard of Oz.”

The show is a laugh riot; it should not be missed as we cannot be sure how long it will be before he returns. Fortunately, you have four shots at this: 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 27-28; 5:30 p.m. Thursday and 8:45 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 1 and 3; on the Indy Eleven stage at the IndyFringe Theatre.

IndyFringe: Breakneck Comedy of Errors

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By Wendy Carson

Tim Mooney returns with his one-man production of one of Shakespeare’s zaniest plays.

Wearing literally dozens of hats to try to help keep the characters straight (there are two sets of identical twins with each pair sharing the same name), he gives us “Breakneck Comedy of Errors,” presenting the entire Shakespeare comedy within the 1-hour limit of a Fringe show.

While his other offerings relied more strongly on various monologues, this one keeps things sparkling with witty commentary. For example, after one brother and his servant spend years searching for each’s twin, when the brother encounters his servant’s twin who gives him a totally different account of their previous interaction, rather than considering that this might be his servant’s twin brother (for whom they have sought) , he immediately thinks that the country is full of sorcerers and they must leave or be killed by the witches. Needless to say, with so many cases of mistaken identity throughout the story, hilarity ensues.

So, if you are a fan of Mr. Mooney, The Bard, or just looking for a goofy time with lots of hats, this is the show for you. Content is appropriate for all ages; while younger children will likely not follow the plot, they will still enjoy the show. Remaining performances are Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, Aug. 27-28, at the Indy Eleven stage of the IndyFringe Theatre, 719 E. St. Clair.

IndyFringe: My Grandmother’s Eyepatch

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This is part of IndyFringe 2022, Aug. 18-Sept. 4 (individual performance times vary) in downtown Indianapolis. Details and tickets at IndyFringe.org.

By Wendy Carson

Welcome to the memorial service for Mamie Lee Ratliff Finger, beloved wife, mother and grandmother.

Julia Finger VanderVeen, Mamie’s granddaughter, has brought us all to pay tribute to the life of this remarkable woman. Through stories told by several attendees and Julia herself, we discover much about Mamie’s life and times.

For some strange reason, we learn almost as much about Julia throughout the course of our event. Perhaps this portion of the show was meant to be for the several Agents who RSVP’d but did not actually show up.

At one point, Julia becomes so bereft that when a message with instructions for resurrection of a loved one finds its way to us, she makes an attempt. Whether it is successful, I must leave for you to discover.

I could go on to try to describe exactly how great this show is, but words cannot fully express the sheer level of hilarity Julia reaches with her dry wit and physical humor. Suffice to say, you will regret not seeing this show.

Yet, while her grandmother’s time is through, there is still time for you. The show returns for the last weekend of Fringe, 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 1, and 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 3, at the Indy Eleven stage of the IndyFringe Theatre, 719 E. St. Clair.