ASHEVILLE, N.C. (828newsNOW) — The 24th Asheville Fringe Arts Festival commences this week, bringing dozens of artists from all kinds of disciplines to town for a celebration of the weird, wonderful and out-of-the-box. Before the festival begins in earnest this Thursday, meet a few of the artists in our show spotlights.
Next up, The Missing in Action Company, a six member theatre troupe formed for the purpose of producing “Made in America?,” written by Yide Cai and directed by Wanyu Yang.
“Made in America?” will be performed at 7 p.m., Friday, March 20 and 5 p.m., Saturday, March 21 at Little Animals, 31 Carolina Ln. Find tickets here.
Building brick by brick
In true Fringe Fest fashion, “Made in America?” will not be staged in a traditional theater. Instead, the show, which is set in an art museum, will be performed at Little Animals, an art gallery and community hub.
“I am very excited about being able to do this in an actual gallery,” said actor Adam Friedman. “The first time we did it, it was in a traditional theatrical space. I think one of the beauties of fringe festivals in general, and specifically doing it at Asheville Fringe is kind of the unique spaces we are in.”
The play follows an art curator presenting his museum’s latest acquisition, a brick, which happens to be the last brick ever made in America. As the curator describes the brick, other actors will tell stories of the brick’s past, which in turn comment on the political present.
According to “Made in America?” playwright Yide Cai, the brick is an essential symbol to the show’s themes.
“I feel it creates a contrast, because people don’t know this brick. Like, most of the time they see it on the buildings, or they don’t think too much of it, so to have that and then to have it contain so much story and significance, it’s a rewarding kind of experience,” Cai said. “The theatre is all make-believe, you know? It’s about how do you make something out of nothing. So, the bigger, the more nothing it is, the more that something is meaningful.”
The show has evolved brick by brick. “Made in America?” started out as a one man show before expanding to an ensemble of four actors. In its Fringe Fest rendition, there are five performers, making this week’s production a brand-new take on the material.
For director Wanyu Yang, the material serves as a way to find silliness in the seriousness of the present moment.
“I’ve had a lot of fun using this piece to explore beyond the text,” Yang said. “We’ve been using a lot of devising techniques and clowning techniques to sort of enhance the meaning, the silliness, the kind of abstraction of the reality that is so apparent to us right now. To try to find a little bit of levity in a time like this.”
For more information about “Made in America?,” visit tickets.ashevillefringe.org/events/made-in-america.