Review: DADS at 12th Ave Arts

DADS doesn’t so much invite you in as dare you to stick around long enough to figure it out. Now playing at 12th Ave Arts, this messy, physical, and defiantly queer performance — created and performed by the Drama Tops duo Elby Brosch and Shane Donohue — explores grief through endurance, irony, and chaos. But for much of its 90-minute runtime, you’re left wondering what, exactly, you’re watching, and why.

Brosch and Donohue open the show in playful robes, greeting and smiling at the audience, pointing out that their feather boas are made of chicken feathers. There’s a flippant, cabaret-like energy that initially feels charming. Then comes an extended onstage costume change where the two race to put on their dance outfits: leather-daddy inspired costumes made entirely of Velcro. It’s light and goofy, but almost too casual. It made me wonder if the show had actually started yet, the pacing already starting to sag.

After the costumes are on, there’s some brief, structured movement: stiff posing, ragdoll collapses, and a little choreography. Just as you expect something more substantial to unfold, DADS shifts gears entirely. Brosch and Donohue spend a solid chunk of the performance blowing up bright orange inflatables — giant wrenches, motorcycles, giant handcuffs — all while crouched and perpetually bouncing, making an already tiresome task look twice as exhausting.

But that’s what it was. We, as the audience, watched two performers bounce and blow up inflatables for 25 minutes to the tune of strange sci-fi scores. If it's meant to be funny, it wasn't. It's just hard to watch. And after all that, they attach the inflatables to their bodies, where they immediately deflated, and not clearly intentionally. 

This, in a nutshell, was the experience of DADS: a lot of waiting for something to happen, and when it did, it often elicited discomfort. Performers would go backstage for seemingly too long, only to return attempting to walk and balance inside the upturned rim of a tire. Inflatables would be painstakingly blown up, only to collapse. A giant inflatable structure — a grief castle, if you will — took five minutes to inflate, only for the two performers to stand inside it and briefly hug. But it’s all ok, apparently, because it’s a metaphor? I went in thinking that this dance duo would have a performance with way more dancing. 

It’s not until near the end, in the first and only moment of seemingly rehearsed dialogue, when Brosch, lying with a tire on his chest and Donohue resting on top of it, talks about his dad. At one point, Brosch says explicitly that "grief is uncomfortable and confusing." After nearly 70 minutes, the audience is finally let into the point of the show.

On one hand, telling the audience why a show is good is a storytelling faux pas. If the performers need to tell the audience why the show is good, then it’s not good. On the other hand, this moment where Brosch opens up about his father is touching. It's the one moment of pure honesty. I believe Brosch and Donohue were trying to express grief in a way that made sense to them (or at least to Brosch — Donohue’s emotional state took a backseat). Brosch reveals that his father composed experimental sci-fi music and had hoped his son would follow in his avant garde footsteps. This strange performance, in many ways, felt like a nod to that legacy — and perhaps a way of working through loss.

Brosch lying down with a tire on his chest, and a Donohue leaning on that tire, sharing personal memories about his father, occasionally asking Donohue to add “more weight” or “less weight” onto the tire, is the most poignant part of the show. Suddenly, beats and choices from the performance click into place. And Donohue is very tender as he listens to Brosch. It’s a beautiful moment that transforms seemingly random choices into something deeply personal, and it’s frustrating how little of DADS lives in that vulnerable space. That kind of emotional resonance was possible. It just got buried under layers of quirkiness and physical gags.

This performance didn’t feel like a full expression of grief when so many moments were either backlit by irony or designed to create discomfort for the sake of discomfort: a prompt for the audience to cheer; a slowed-down version of LMFAO's "Shots"; inflatable props collapsing; poses held just a little too long. It felt like it prioritized being clever over being cathartic. 

I'll buy that the confusion, clumsiness, and chaos were meant to mirror the disorientation of grief. I can intellectually understand that argument. But understanding the intention doesn’t fix the pacing issues or the emotional distance. Sometimes, art that’s supposed to be uncomfortable ends up just feeling under-baked.

After the show, I even researched endurance-based dance styles, curious if DADS was pulling from a larger canon. If it is, it’s an extremely niche one. More often, DADS felt like a concept piece still in search of its final form. There’s no question Brosch and Donohue are creative, committed performers who poured a lot of effort into this work. And it's really important and brave to put on unabashedly queer pieces given our geopolitical climate. I just struggled to connect with DADS — and I wouldn’t recommend it.

Grade: D