roller rink death kink sex cult
Written and directed by Skylar J. Beirne
Assistant direction by Ryan Honey
Presented by Theater for the New City, Crystal Field, Executive Artistic Director, in association with SeaTrain STudios at Theater for the New City
155 First Ave., Manhattan, NYC
August 31-September 15, 2024
 |
| L-R: Daniel Oakley and Allie Donnelly. Photo by Dennis Beirne. |
"No kink shaming" has become a widely accepted maxim, but what if the fetish in question is, say, killing and eating someone? The "levels" of the titular cult in Skylar J. Beirne's
roller rink death kink sex cult–handily enumerated on a square of paper placed on each audience member's seat before the show–do not explicitly include cannibalism, but neither do they rule it out. And the cult's leader claims that, with consent, even murder can be not only acceptable but transcendently beautiful. Sometimes funny, sometimes discomfiting, occasionally gloriously surreal, this penetrating play wades boldly into the murky waters where love, sex, power, control, loneliness, desire, rebellion, and violence converge and commingle.
roller rink death kink sex cult is currently part of the 2024
Dream Up Festival at Theater for the New City (TNC). The new works festival, in its twelfth iteration this year, runs from August 25th to September 15th and is dedicated to discovering new authors and challenging, non-traditional works and ideas. Helmed by the TNC's Literary Manager, Michael Scott-Price, this year's Dream Up Festival offers 16 plays, 12 of which are world premieres, one of which is an American premiere, and all of which can be seen for a ticket price of $15-$20 each.
 |
| L-R: Daniel Oakley, Tessie Herrasti, Christina Cotignola, Jaxon Beirne, Allie Donnelly, Rose Meehan. Photo by Dennis Beirne. |
The roller rink in question is both one of the fronts for a cult run by a man known to his followers as Almighty Bob (Daniel Oakley) and the location of some of the activities engaged in by higher-level members, violent or extremely taboo acts far removed from the relatively uncontroversial choking kink of Level 1s. Bob presents himself as creating a safe space for those whose desires would be considered unacceptably deviant outside the community of the cult, but is he offering Sadeian liberation taken as far as it can go or smoothly disguising the exploitation of others in the service of his own desires (and fears)? Or is that question itself a false binary? Emma (Allie Donnelly), whose costuming–matching red lipstick and hair bow with a white babydoll dress–invests her with the eroticized innocence of a fairy tale heroine, becomes, in the play's opening, a brand new member of Bob's cult, her membership processed by Carol (Christina Cotignola, bringing sympathetic nuance to the role), a kind of manager for the cult and Bob's right-hand woman. Carol is waiting for Bob to fulfill a particular promise to her, though it is one that would require self-sacrifice on his part, which is not Bob's strong suit. Emma, who avows that she is joining the cult due to the aftereffects of her fiancé's accidental death, demonstrates a bit of a fixation on Bob, but the only person she befriends within the cult is a woman named Sam (Rose Meehan), who begins to contemplate bringing her time in the cult to an end. During Emma's own time there, will she remain a Level 2? And whether she does or not, how will the experience change, or perhaps merely unbridle, her? Meanwhile, a pair of mustachioed FBI agents (Rose Meehan and Tessie Herrasti) have noticed a pattern in a group of missing persons reports.
 |
| L-R: Allie Donnelly and Jaxon Beirne. Photo by Dennis Beirne. |
Some of the central questions raised by
roller rink death kink sex cult cluster around agency. Is it possible to truly give consent to harm, or a certain degree of harm? How would we know whether such consent were "truly" given? Does the intent or motivation of the person consenting matter? If consent can change, what does that mean in regard to consenting to something irreversible? And how do structures of consent and agency intersect with the techniques of abusers? In presenting the dynamics of desire and death, of adoration and abasement,
roller rink death kink sex cult aims to evoke the cinematic, and the production experiments with staging conventions, arranging the performers in a row of chairs with script stands and interspersing video (such as the introductory instructional videos to each cult level) and projections. The cast is not restricted to those seats, but generally sits in or stands at them, except for one character in a black morphsuit (Jaxon Beirne) whose roaming blankness arguably leaves it to the audience to decide if he represents one cult member or many. Music from artists such as Duran Duran and Berlin infuses the production with an 80s-tinged but temporally ambiguous atmosphere, while an exuberantly pro-sin monologue by Herrasti (funny as various other characters as well) as a character named Happy; a duet between Bob and Emma; and a wonderfully executed dance sequence furnish memorably atypical scenes. Oakley adeptly brings out both the attractive and frightening sides of Bob, and Donnelly is fabulous throughout as the complicated Emma, giving the show's concluding moments that much more impact. One idea that can be discerned during the show is that taking and relinquishing control can be so close as to be equivalent: so taking the initiative to give yourself over to
roller rink death kink sex cult would be entirely appropriate.
-John R. Ziegler and Leah Richards
Comments
Post a Comment