23 Feet In 12 Minutes: Redux – A Fringe Festival Success Story
by Stephen Tortora-Lee on November 16, 2011
15 months ago I had the opportunity to review 23 Feet In 12 Minutes as it premiered in the 2010 NYC Fringe Festival. Since then this show has made it to New Orleans and back with some wonderful work-shopping in the Cape Cod Theatre Project along the way. It came back to New York as part of the All For One Festival and I was lucky enough to see the newly evolved work. While the show only had a 2 day run I thought I’d do an in-depth exploration of the piece highlighting the evolution from the version I saw 15 months ago. I hope 23 Feet In 12 Minutes will continue to be performed and developed in the future, and continue to have a wider and wider audience, because while it gives gripping stories of many of the tragic human consequences that happened following the touchdown of Hurricane Katrina, it also shows us the best of humanity.
Written by Mari Brown, performed by Deanna Pacelli, and directed by Pamela Berlin and David Travis this new revision moves from the free-flowing stream of conciousness writing and performing in the premiere version, to a well thought out piece where every action (or inaction) seems carefully weighted and balanced to tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and a NOW. At the end I think anyone who sees this will want to do whatever they can to help prevent disasters – wherever they happen in the world – from getting this out of control again by emulating the people they’ve seen represented in this show. Last time I wrote a review, I compared everyone to heroes. This time I think it is more apt to compare them to saints both because the Saints are the New Orleans team, but also because I hope that these stories can help others learn to live by the examples given by Saints in the spiritual sense. The fact that all of these characters in 23 Feet In 12 Minutes came from interviews of real people makes it even more inspiring — and akin to the history of what elevates a person to sainthood.
