Review: LOTUS: A QUARANTINE STORY at District Fringe

The worldwide pandemic had some seismic effects — on institutions as well as individuals.

Two years of cancellations because of Covid helped lead to the dissolution of Capital Fringe in January after 20 years. To salvage the idea — and help the creators who had in some cases spent years on creating their own upcoming Fringe productions — a new, smaller District Fringe was established this summer up at the University of the District of Columbia.

And one of its productions takes us back to those not-so-long-ago days of only five years ago.

Gigi Cammaroto’s “Lotus: A Quarantine Story” recalls that worrisome, isolated time when connection to the world was somehow reduced to Zoom screens. 

Struggling to keep up with college studies on abnormal psychology, a spirited student named Lotus competes among dim students (also online), trades late night calls with a boyfriend, calls upstairs to her mom, obsesses about medical school acceptance, imagines she’s missing tests and realizes through class notes that social isolation is one of the key causes of mental illness (along with genetics and stress). 

That feeling of “not enough and too much” and wondering if we’ll survive in that time is familiar. But she also toys with the idea that a psychotic break may also be a spiritual awakening. Who knows which is which? 

“Lotus” is listed in Fringe literature as “comedy/ drama/ musical/ cabaret/ opera/ dance/ movement/ storytelling/ spoken word” and dabbles in just about all of that (except maybe opera), along with throwing in yoga, dance and mime.

Describing herself as “an interdisciplinary artist-muse creating at the intersection of the expressive arts and holistic wellness,” you can witness her exploring entwining these disciplines while reflecting the worries borne in Covid times. All this on an industrial rug in a lecture hall strewn with only a few props.

A key one, though, is a whiteboard on which she jots down phrases from her professor’s disembodied voice or her own conclusions — late erasing it to creates a more tightly edited personal message.

The bare bones production can work against her — the volume on the Zoom voices sometimes drowned out her live replies. 

But with its fearless experimentalism and nebulous shape, “Lotus” lives up to the Fringe expectations of something daring and different even as we get to witness a theatrical talent blossom before our eyes.

Cammaroto, whose first professional stage experience came in the swing cast of “Frankenstein” in Herndon in 2022, had he first star turn  in Theater Alliance’s “American Fast” in April as a college basketball star playing during Ramadan. She demonstrates in “Lotus” not only her range in acting and movement but also in writing and creating theater art, just the very thing Fringe was revived to showcase.

Running time: About 45 minutes.