Womanhood Through Rugby

As the final performance of the month-long FRIGID New York at the Kraine Theater, the autobiographical one-woman show "With You!" was an uplifting crescendo to a powerful festival. With You!, written and performed by Una Aya Osato and directed by Nelson T. Eusebio III, starts out as a peppy, quirky coming-of-age story of a young awkward athlete gaining her confidence in her sexuality and herself through college rugby. While Osato energetically transports us through her four years of college rugby, it is easy to see how important these growing pains are to discovering who we really are, what really matters to us, and what's important in the world outside ourselves. As Osato shares her story and how team sports helped her in her self quest, we are reminded that we are a product of our experiences.

Osato is a fireball of electricity as she jumps out in her gym clothes and hypes up all theatergoers. The audience literally feels like they are in the bleachers during the game as she runs, jumps, rolls, and bounces back and forth from characterizations of herself and her teammates. Eusebio, as Osato’s director, knows his performer well and sets her free. She fluidly leaps back and forth acting out the various plays of the game and creating the drama and excitement of winning. The audience can’t help but high five with Osato and cheer her realization of her own power.

As Osato playfully explains the meaning of the rugby songs at the after-party, she also reveals its significance in her social and sexual development as a woman. Osato has the comedic physical talent of a Lucille Ball as she pops from her awkward self to the various girls she is attracted to on the team. Eusebio’s direction allowed her to dance from each very specific character to her own younger self who is left trying to figure out the rules of the game and life. 

Particularly humorous was her interpretation of her budding relationship with one of the more seasoned players who offers her advice on love. Osato’s talent is her ability to reveal the deeper emotional issues by how she builds the physical life of her characters. As she shares her story, she also reminds the audience on the importance of creating early bonds in friendship. And just like the rest of us, it is not until heartbreak and isolation that she really comes of age.

The piece ends with a more mature, confident woman returning to her alma mater to encourage the young athletes of tomorrow. As she reflects back with the wisdom of hindsight, she shares the lessons she really learned during that vulnerable time of development when she discovered her identity through team sports. She learns we must experience the struggles of love and identity to be able to bring about positive change in the world.

While the festival is over, FRIGID NY sponsors eight festivals a year. Visit http://www.horsetrade.info/frigid-festival to learn more about the festival's various events. Una Aya Osato can be seen in various venues across the city and the country and other “Una Happenings” can be found on her website, http://www.unaosato.com. For more information about upcoming events at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th St. between 2nd and 3rd Aves.) in Manhattan, visit http://newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/krainetheater/theater.php.

#IKEA Angst Emoji, Emoji

The script for Help Me Out Here, an entry in the 2016 FRIGID New York festival, pulls material from text messages written when people were drunk, iPhone notes, personal journals, positive affirmation recordings, and sprawling Post-it notes on which writers look for the meaning of existence—all while assembling a chair from IKEA. Michael Joel and Kaitlin Overton, who conceived the script, also perform and co-directed the piece; they keep their real first names as the characters.

Taking on three jobs to produce one’s own work in the theater requires a dynamic, steadfast vision to provide the ultimate experience for the audience. When it occurs, magic happens; however, even though the angst of a younger generation lost in the mobile phone/social media argument—"If I’m so connected, why do I feel so alone?"—is conveyed in Help Me Out Here, the play comes up short. Conceptually it has footing, but with only 40 minutes of material, there are too many missteps.

Lonely, frustrated and uninspired, Michael sits down to write but settles into how many different ways he can scrawl "dip shit." He drinks wine from a ceramic coffee mug. With the help of her own bottle of wine, Kaitlin, meanwhile, is attempting to assemble an IKEA chair while sending needy text messages to Michael, some of which are answered, and some not. Equally as lonely, and exacerbated by the chair, she seeks solace and empowerment from self-help CDs. Until the closing scene, they are both on stage delivering monologues but have no physical interaction besides the text messaging.

 

Michael has more of the in-depth dialogue that provides insight into his anxious view of himself and the world. His diatribe on hashtags is particularly telling: “Look at what is happening in the world. Humanity as a whole is a fucking hellscape,” he says. “And what is anyone doing about it? Nothing. Fucking hashtags. That’s about as far as we have advanced as a society.”

 

Riffing on the proverb "When one door closes...," Michael uncovers an ah-ha moment: “So you start and end every day pushing and pushing at this door, and you end up wasting years of your life trying to push this door open when finally you get the sense enough to look at your surroundings and notice that this whole time, printed on the handle of the door it says in big bold black fucking letters ‘Pull.’”

He attempts to go to a party but instead listens to every neurotic thought in his head, delivered as a voice-over. Soon enough he is barely managing a lame excuse to the hostess to make his exit. Meanwhile, maybe because of the wine or just because she is growing weary waiting for a response to her text messages, Kaitlin falls asleep. The parts of an unfinished chair and the instruction manual are all around her.

Kaitlin’s challenge assembling an Ikea chair against the backdrop of life is a keen metaphor for both of them. The inclusion of her character, however, lacks conviction from the playwrights, as evidenced by her lack of dialogue. Michael battles with life, world and God issues while Kaitlin listens to positive affirmation on a CD and argues with a how-to manual. This type of dialogue only reaffirms the age-old myth that men are strong and educated, while women are weak and helpless.

A different director could have brought a fresh eye to the play: one who addresses cracks in the storyline while pulling/pushing the actors to dig deeper. Perhaps because of their closeness to this material neither Joel or Overton has addressed inconsistencies in the script. Kaitlin, in a text message, asks Michael if he has a screwdriver. When he arrives they finish the chair, but without a screwdriver, they never reference the screwdriver, using an Allen wrench instead.

However, the real problem is that the directors of Help Me Out Here have given Kaitlin so little substantial dialogue and a dated female story line. “I don’t understand these instruction booklets,” she says. “I never have and I never will.” Even in the modern age of IKEA, the writing behind Kaitlin’s monologues has not allowed her character to progress. Instead, she is relegated to being either unwilling or unable to understand an instruction manual or the need to have a man come to the rescue.

The next morning, Kaitlin awakens, still surrounded by the pieces of an unfinished chair, and she calls Michael. Human interaction, not another text message, moves him to come over. Maybe, after all, it’s not so much a man to the rescue but rather the bigger picture that people can accomplish more together with a glass of wine than by going it solo. Until the playwrights, or a different director, rethink the point of the angst, there is not much to help.

A No Dominion Theatre Company production, Help Me Out Here plays at Under St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place) in Manhattan. Remaining performances are Wednesday, Feb. 24, at 7:10 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 27, at 10:30 p.m.; and Saturday, March 5, at 12:30 p.m. Tickets are $18 for adults and $13 for students at www.horsetrade.info. For a complete list of plays presented by FRIGID New York, visit www.horsetrade.info/frigid-festival.