Review: WHEN I WAS at District Fringe

Teenage years are no picnic for anyone. That we survive it at all makes us wish we all had the knowledge then what we know now.

Such is the premise of MaKayla Baker Paxton’s play “When I Was” that’s playing as part of the District Fringe.

On a set messy as a kid’s room (beanbag chair, shelves, bad lights) she tells the tale of apparently her own adolescence in West Virginia, interacting often with the younger actress chosen to play herself at 13, Elizabeth Eby. 

It’s amusing to see the exchange between the two, or that, at 32 or so, Paxton can converse with her younger self, played by a young talent who never lived then, helping create her teenage world 20 years before, early into the new millennium where she was consumed by emo and pop punk music she tried to hide from her Christian mother’s meddling ears.

Emo, Paxton explains as the play begins, is a post-punk rock movement of the early 2000s that was more emotional than run of the mill indie rock, and in her mind reached its pinnacle in the band My Chemical Romance, whose poetry she compares to Edgar Allen Poe to such a degree there’s a brief quiz for the audience to guess which line came from which tortured artist. 

There’s kind of a dark goth basis to both, though — perfect for the journaling teen wearing black and considering self harm.

Paxton narrates with some detail every heartache, disappointment and shocking development of adolescence (“my face was a landmine of pus and tears”). Each chapter is presented as tracks on her own mix CD. 

It all gets pretty specific, to the degree that Paxton reads from what looks like her own 2007 journal entries projected on the wall, alongside what could be actual family pictures. 

Diagnosed at the time with an inflated ego, who acts if before an invisible audience (here Eby gestures to indicate the Fringe-goers proving the point), Paxton sometimes seems to be engaging in a kind of therapy if not exorcism as she comes to some hard realizations.

A couple of times, Paxton gets teary-eyed, as when talking about her mom’s good intentions, and it’s not because she’s a method actor, it’s because she’s sharing something that personal.

Under the direction of Rachel E. Herrick, there’s a real rapport between the two women, though the wily Eby seems to know more about her older self at times than vice versa. 

“When I Was” reaches its strongest point when she gets most serious about unexpected death or the extra dangers every woman faces in America and the need to support, not abandon friends going through the worst times.

But there’s a lot here, even at 75 minutes. It could have ended a couple of times successfully but she keeps going as if to try once more to reframe a conclusion. Or add bonus tracks to her mix CD.

The surprise of “When I Was” is, given how much she goes on about her favorite bands, there’s very little music heard, only errant guitar riffs between scenes. If she’s making the case of the music’s importance as more than the soundtrack for her own youth, she doesn’t give anybody a chance to really hear it. (But there’s a suggested Spotify playlist attached to the program that amounts to 89 songs and runs about five hours). 

Running time: About 75 minutes. 

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