Step inside actress’ brain as part of Seattle theater’s series of one-woman shows
Marianna de Fazio, known to local theater lovers for her work with Olympia’s Harlequin Productions, is offering audiences a peek into her brain on Friday.
Her one-woman show, “Somnolent,” shares with audiences what it feels like to have a brain bleed, as she did a dozen years ago.
“It’s like radio silence in your brain,” said de Fazio of Seattle, recently featured in Harlequin’s radio theater productions of “Dracula” and “A Christmas Carol.” “There’s actually a sense of peace. There was no pain, but I was very far from the real world.
“I was somnolent,” she told The Olympian. “I went back and found my hospital report, and that word showed up all over. … It means abnormally sleepy. I was responsive, but it would take sometimes as long as 30 seconds before I would acknowledge that I had been spoken to.”
A preview of the show — part of 17 Minute Stories, a series of one-woman shows produced by Macha Theatre Works of Seattle — is both eerie and surreal, bringing to mind a horror film set at an amusement park.
The question that arises is, “Where is she, and how did she get there?”
That’s fitting given that “How did I get here?” is the theme of the series, which is Macha’s response to making theater during the pandemic.
“With this project, we aim to explore the complexities of human existence through the performance of unique personal narratives that further our understanding of each other, ourselves, and the society we create,” Macha producing artistic director Amy Poisson wrote on the theater’s website. “Whether it is an intimate retelling of self-revelation or a rousing ballad of personal adventure, we want to dive into them all.”
“Somnolent” is the sixth of a planned 17-part series. (Tickets are on a sliding scale, and the suggested price is, of course, $17.)
The first five stories — including “Gasp,” in which Claribel Gross of Olympia explores her Nicaraguan roots and explains the proper way to drink rum — are available as a package deal for $50.
De Fazio’s piece invites viewers into a different world.
“A lot of it does take place in my brain,” she said. “It’s one big metaphor. I’ve been thinking of it as poetry in motion.”
Indeed, she still doesn’t know how she got to that strange world, though she says stroke survivors will recognize it.
“I was healthy, and all of a sudden, I had a cerebral hemorrhage,” she said. “It can happen to anyone, I found out, and it does happen all the time.”
It took de Fazio, then in the second year of the University of Washington’s professional actor training program, about a year to recover both mentally and physically from the brain bleed, which at first left her unable to walk and increased her need for sleep for months.
“I was sleeping, like, 16 hours a night at first,” she said. “I found out that the brain heals during sleep.”
Psychologically, she said, the recovery process was much longer.
“This has stuck with me,” she said. “I’d never really had the time, the bandwidth or the emotional space to look at this. But 12 years on and with the extra space that COVID has created, I decided I’d like to look at it again.”
‘Somnolent’
- What: Movement is at the heart of Marianna de Fazio’s one-woman show about her experience of having bleeding in her brain. It’s part of Macha Theatre Works’ 17 Minute Stories.
- When: 8 p.m. Feb. 19 and available to stream thereafter
- Tickets: $7-$37
- Preview: https://youtu.be/kx9vbq46d94
- More information: https://www.machatheatreworks.com/tickets/
- Also: You can watch Macha’s first five 17 Minute Stories — including “Gasp,” by Claribel Gross of Olympia — for $50 (https://www.machatheatreworks.com/tickets/).
This story was originally published February 18, 2021 at 5:45 AM.