Review: FRIDA...A SELF-PORTRAIT at Union Arts Center
One-person productions are typically autobiographical: the performer teaches the audience about themself, as themself. But this seemingly “direct” approach is often not actually revealing, where an artist performs a ritualized series of autobiographical anecdotes that fit into the form’s genre conventions. In touring production Frida…a self-portrait, now playing at Union Arts Center, the artist subverts the one-person show form by adding a layer, indirectly telling the story of the performer through the experiences of another artist: the surrealist portraitist Frida Kahlo. This new show asks, can we better understand one artist by telling the story of another?
