What I liked
I loved everything about the show. It spoke to me as an artist, she was telling her story but I related it to my own story which was just completely inspiring.
What I didn't like
If I had some notes I would give them. It was a full dose of reality about what these dreams do to us and for us. They are both simultaneously working against us bringing pain and as well completely on our side giving us purpose. The show just didn’t have any bad beats. It was completely raw and unpredictable and she let herself be completely free to use. She let us in and it was a harsh world to see, it’s painful but she was so resilient by the end. It was life.
My overall impression
So, they call this a “One Woman Show” but that’s just simply misleading because from the moment Nina takes the stage by first — “dipping her toe from around the corner of the wall, testing the waters of her elementary childhood into the world of the arts” — you’re immediately captivated. The show instantaneously goes from a One Woman Show to a 51 person show, her and the 50 of us in the audience become tethered.
Nina’s willingness to be so singularly specific in her dreams journey brought out my own tears as she developed into her trigger phrases of the artist and their -" river streams of consciousness doubt, no income, blood, sweat and years of toiling aimlessly" -.
She took us on her own personal journey and you can so easily visualize where she is with her light and darkness in her life and how she fights it, it always comes back to the dream. Her story is arching but not in the direction it needs to be and you can feel that she’s completely filled the entire stage and room with her breaking point — and then she breaks. And she allows herself to fall so deep into her break that it poisons the room dark. I began thinking of my own personal breaks, I’m now seeing my own supreme depression through her and her performance. Her willingness to lie broken and not rush through the break, the turmoil, the mentals of life was the definitive moment in the show for me. Allowing us to live in this state of shock with her was so bold and brilliant, powerful and eerie.
But, as all the chosen ones do in the end, she rose back to her feet, slowly, aching and painfully pulled out her — symbolic controller which symbolized the dream — and started building her dream again “Brick by Brick.” And as she so eloquently puts it in the play “The dreams no longer hurt, the dreams heal.”
By the end she got a well deserved standing ovation. It was a masterpiece spoken through a females perspective, a minorities struggle dealing w/ a work visa, the fight of type casting blanketed by judging a book by its racial coloring and ethnicity. I’ve seen many things, but this piece will be unforgettable for me.
