For me the final day of Fringe 2013 started at Writers &
Books for “Heart and Soul: Medicine and
Life.” This spoken-word program featured poetry and short stories written
by five health professionals: family physician Pebble M. Kranz,
family medicine resident Natercia Rodrigues,
family therapist Tziporah Rosenberg, resident family
physician Francesca Decker, and family physician Colleen T. Fogarty.
This was an interesting window into the minds of modern-day
healers, specifically those who use writing to work through the joys and
challenges of their work. Think of the stresses that come with your job. Now
imagine if people’s lives literally depended on you. That’s a lot of pressure
to put on a human, and some of that came out through the writings shared by these
women.
All of the writing was evocative and several pieces were
quite powerful. Some dealt with celebrating their patients’ successes. Some
dealt with their losses. Some were about what it’s like to be a doctor. Some
regarded the healthcare system in general. A surprising number relayed the
doctors’ own personal medical issues.
The piece that really defined the performance for me was
“Textbook” by Decker. This was beautifully written, and while you could see
where the narrative was going, it was no less gutting when she inevitably got
there.
The question-and-answer period that followed the reading
brought up several interesting issues, most of them relating to the therapeutic
nature of writing. The consensus in general was that sharing stories helps us to
gain perspective and compassion for others. “Heart and Soul” gave me a better
understanding of what doctors deal with on a daily basis.
I headed to the East End for the rest of Fringe, and even on
the fourth floor of the Scio Street parking garage I could hear an odd noise.
As I got to the sidewalk it got louder. It was a harmonic humming, and I
finally realized that it was the “Sun
Boxes” exhibit, which was originally supposed to be in the park next to
Rochester Contemporary Arts Center, but which didn’t work due to the buildings shading the
courtyard. Craig Colorusso’s exhibit combines 20
speakers with solar panels, so that when the sun hits them they emit a tone
that I found to be both calming and eerie. After the original site proved to be
a bust, they were moved over to the lawn in front of Easy on East, where on
Saturday they were picking up plenty of rays and drawing a nice-sized crowd. I
couldn’t help but think that this type of an installation would be a lovely
addition to the Memorial Art Gallery’s new sculpture garden.
Next up was Fringe
Fingers at Kilbourn Hall. Ten current and former
piano/keyboard students of Eastman School of Music’s Tony Caramia took to six
keyboards and two massive pianos for a variety of works. There was jazz, a
playful folk-song mash-up, and a fantastic world premiere of a new-music piece
by one of the students that combined atmospheric keyboards with driving,
intense piano solos.
Throughout it all I was blown away by the ability of these
young musicians, as well as their obvious enthusiasm. Fringe is a great
opportunity for the Eastman crew to show off the work going on at the school to
Rochester at large, and Fringe Fingers totally did that. It was very clear what
a jewel we have here, and the unbelievable talent that it is helping to mold.
The performance closed out with Caramia
taking turns dueting with five or so of the students
on a 10-plus-minute fantasy on “Porgy and Bess” in which none of the pianists — including Caramia, who played non-stop the entire
time — had any scores in front of them. All from memory. Absolutely astonishing.
I wrapped things up with “Spirits
Within” at Christ Church. This event mixes music (ESM instructor Stephen
Kennedy improvising on the church’s Craighead-Saunders Pipe Organ)
with projected 3D visuals (created by RIT Professor Marla Schweppe
and her students). I suspect there may have been technical difficulties going
on at the showing I attended. The organ sounded amazing, of course, as
Kennedy’s improvisations were creepy and monstrous and made me think the church
could do brisk business with some kind of a Halloween show. (Because that’s exactly what a church should be doing,
Eric; playing into the corny horror stuff with Halloween…) But the projections
were kind of a mess. Words kept popping up that I’m fairly sure were not
supposed to be there. The images would start, slow down to a crawl, then restart again. It was incredibly choppy.
There were portions where the projections worked great, and
it made for a cool audio-visual experience. But there were others were it looked
pretty amateurish. This was a fan-favorite event at the inaugural Fringe
Festival last year. I didn’t see it then, but I’m curious if the projections
remained unchanged. If so, while it may have passed muster last year, I’ve seen
some truly inspiring digital-projection work this year (see: “Anomaly,” put on
at the RMSC Planetarium). The bar has been raised. If “Spirits Within” comes
back — and I hope it does — I hope the digital aspect meets the challenge.
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2013.
