Three smiling performers strut onstage over a jaunty soundtrack. They encourage the audience to sit back and relax. If we had any doubt, a scrolling sign hangs over the stage, proclaiming: WELCOME! ANNOUNCEMENT! We think we know what to expect as we settle into Sacha Vega’s PINCH at 3AM Theatre in Queens.
The trio, including Vega, begins confidently, but within moments, a shadow of uncertainty appears. Between leg fans and shoulder rolls, I catch flashes of unease in Sophia Parker’s eyes as she scans the audience. Neva Guido turns away for a beat too long. Vega peers through her fingers. Are these performers afraid of us? Of each other? Who is in control here? The contradictory layers of this world, and its contracts, flicker into view.
Vega’s choreography beckons us behind the curtain. Through a series of surreal scenes, she prompts us to reconsider the risks of performance itself, highlighting the inevitability of human vulnerability, both onstage and off. What opportunities for relationship and connection might be possible if we embrace this discomfort?
Vega hones in on our complicated fascination with safety and control. In one scene, the trio, clad in a hodgepodge of work clothes, huddles around an office water cooler. The three performers offer monologues that vaguely intersect at their peripheries—did everyone fill out my workplace culture survey? I heard the newcomer’s deliverables are really impressing the boss. Wait, who got engaged? The disjointed conversation does little to quell these characters’ thinly-veiled anxieties. As the facade of assumed care they hold for each other falls, we’re left with a growing unsettledness at all that’s left unspeakable within the confines of their—our—labor system. The trio is caught between a desperate urge to share their fears and an uncertainty that a safety net exists to catch them. They talk over each other, compete, and seek validation. It’s an exhausting and familiar scene to watch unravel. Just another day at work.
Philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle’s In Praise of Risk broaches the impossibility of attempting to construct a “zero risk” society, challenging the psychic labor we expend to avoid the unavoidable ruptures and changes of living. The fragile self and our connections with others, she argues, buckle under the weight of our misplaced effort.
Both Dufourmantelle and Vega speak to this strange relational paradox of risk and safety. When we strive to eliminate risk, Dufourmantelle writes, “the zero risk we end up with is deadly.” It “strips the subject of responsibility for her acts, [dividing] her from within into…a being of reason who is never sufficiently reasonable.” What, Dufourmantelle and Vega ask, becomes possible when we embrace the risk of living rather than running from it?
As PINCH continues, the stakes of Vega’s onstage world intensify. She approaches the audience with a dog hand puppet, stand-up style. Involving us in her game of risk, she implores us to speak out loud, answering questions about what makes us feel safe. I know, she feigns embarrassment. So cringe, right? But if we don’t participate, Vega tells us, this dog puppet’s family will be killed at the pound. She reminds us that we are entangled in each other’s futures, more deeply and urgently than we often care to remember.
It can be difficult to integrate the digital plane into live performance without sacrificing physical immediacy. Vega’s conceptual command of the theater, however, allows her characters to emerge organically from both IRL and virtual wings, extending her explorations of security to the equally-important online spaces in which we seek comfort. A flirty “virtual safety officer” appears frequently on a portable TV screen. Clad in a platinum wig, she croons at the audience, assuring us that she will keep us safe and happy, despite chaotic flares of her temper. Sometimes, we let ourselves believe her.
Elsewhere, the trio in wigs, berets, and cargo pants perform a drill-like cheerleading routine. Parker, as Ice Princess, spins out after receiving a less-than-perfect score on her skating routine. Guido sweeps in a janitor’s uniform, soon interrupted by Vega. Ahem, Guido gestures, unable to complete their task while Vega primps, unaware of her own footprint. Did she really not see me? Guido asks us, now alone on stage.
Guido’s solo morphs into a monologue exploring the mysterious, the unsaid, and the willfully unnoticed. Guido comes to embody fear itself, raising their earbuds to their face like glowing eyes and prowling the stage in shadow. They ask, only half-rhetorically: what will we do when we’re really alone? Who do we pretend not to see to convince ourselves we are safe? They complicate the assumed ease of this onstage world before disappearing into darkness. The neon sign falls. The TV video distorts and powers down. The artifice and illusions of security disappear.
After the inevitable collapse, Vega presents us with a striking image: three bodies, unembellished, contending with each other’s softness. Rolling out from under the side wings in black clothes, the trio shifts through a slow series of sculptural shapes. Gently, the group searches for increasingly risky moments of weight sharing. Parker then breaks away and watches. Guido and Vega lean, play fight, box, tackle, pin, and choke each other. It’s surprising and raw, as any present confrontation with the vulnerable body must be. This, Vega seems to argue, is part of how authentic entanglement in each other’s lives could feel. That is, of course, if we are willing to practice the improvisation required of establishing trust and, in turn, form an emergent kind of safety that could really hold our weight.
True, we risk disaster at every step—Guido shoves Vega to the ground in one swift motion—but “peril must be faced head-on,” says Dufourmantelle. “This is the least among the forms of courage that might save us.” Without any blinking lights or wide smiles for reassurance, we exit the theater and emerge onto the larger stage of our shared making.
Photo by Max Branigan
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