Over a couple of hours on Saturday, Central Library hosted a variety of small acts. Members of ROC Bottom Slam Team (who performed
later in the evening at TheatreROCS) took turns
performing moving poetry about political and social issues in the Teen Center,
while a pole dancer wowed a small audience with her strength in the Gleason
Auditorium.
A stilts-walker milled about indoors and out, but other than
that, there wasn’t much activity. The Fringe program guide promised other
attractions, including a sword swallower and human blockhead, but I didn’t get
to find out what that latter act entailed, as I had to scoot over to The Little
Theatre for the next show on my schedule.
It would have been impossible to maintain a bad mood after
seeing RIT-based group Dangerous Signs perform “Hands Full of
Shakespeare,” in celebration of the 400th anniversary of The Bard’s death.
The energetic and hilarious performance linked together some
of Shakespeare’s most beloved scenes with a running narrative (with a script by
Danica
Zielinski, who also performed), in which enthusiasts attempt to convert a
hater into a fan. She makes her disdain clear from the start with “I Hate
Shakespeare,” a witty number pulled from the musical “Something Rotten.”
The small company blended layers of storytelling methods
(theatrically performed American Sign Language, dance, and song and spoken word
broadcast on speakers), each player taking a turn with main performances — as
the witches from Macbeth, or dancing and signing to
Patti Smith’s Shakespeare-inspired “Looking for You” — while the others
supplemented each scene with lively physical theater and entertaining facial
expressions.
After each of the performers briefly described different
factors that divide people, the team launched into the prologue to “Romeo and
Juliet.” And to balance that obsessive, naive version of a beginning, they
followed it up with the hilariously-executed verbal fencing scene between Kate
and Petruchio in “Taming of the Shrew.”
“Hands Full of Shakespeare” is one of my favorites of all the
shows I’ve seen in any year of the Rochester Fringe Festival. It was a ton of
fun to watch, and I walked away with a renewed desire to learn ASL. I could
sense that there were elements in the program that I couldn’t perfectly access,
because I don’t know enough of the language to understand how wonderfully
nuanced ASL storytelling is.
It’s incredibly complex and poetic. For example, after a
fight between two characters accompanied by the Sarah Bareilles song “Gravity,”
one of the players softly made the sign for “I love you” with a hand she drew
slowly down her cheek to say the word for “tears” or “crying.” Between that
compound gesture, her furrowed brows, and eyes shining with emotion, her
situation was perfectly conveyed — I wondered how many other instances like
this I missed — and my understanding of the medium’s possibilities expanded
suddenly, much to my delight.
I’ve seen ROC Bottom Slam Team’s powerful spoken-word
shows before, but they’ve outdone themselves with their performance at this
Fringe on the TheatreROCS Stage. Rather than simply
taking turns reciting their work, they threaded a narrative throughout the
show, and often spoke specifically about challenging Rochester to be a better
version of itself.
The show opens with two men on stage, one having dreamed of
waking up to his own funeral; the other embodying the addiction he thought he’d
kicked, now viciously mocking him. As he settles back down to sleep, he decides
to watch a little television to take his mind off of the trauma. For the rest
of the show, he sits in the front row or on the stage, interacting and
commenting as the others perform their spoken word skits.
One speaker raves about the desperate search for something,
anything, real and true and lasting. Another performs a sneaky bait and switch,
seducing everyone’s mind into the gutter before revealing that what she
actually describing wasn’t the obvious thing. Through clever wordplay, another
spoke of the depression and discouragement sold to us through television
programming.
One woman performed her piece about the struggle for a sense
of self young girls experience as if each scenario was a headline and she a
news reporter. Tales from the hood and disturbing current events were discussed.
Another team member ranted hilariously about not being able to cook, and all
that entails. A man stares into his cell phone while his girlfriend desperately
rages at him to connect with her. “I’m REAL,” she screams, stomping her foot
and flailing her hands.
ROC Bottom always serves up honest and earnest perspectives
with intelligence and style. I’m grateful they’re local, and highly recommend
their performances.
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2016.
