BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Whether brightening local burlesque stages as her slinky and sweet alter ego Cherry Pitz or exposing her true self on the storytelling circuit, Cyndi Freeman has an uncanny knack for coaxing epic images from intimate moments. The two-time NY Fringe Festival award-winning solo performer — whose work as an instructor with The Moth Community Outreach Program has empowered disabled adults, nurses and the incarcerated tell their stories — has a brand new tale of her own, based on old wounds and earned wisdom.
A world premiere in Horse Trade Theater Group’s annual Frigid Festival, “I Was a Sixth Grade Bigfoot” charts the myths and misunderstandings that define an 11-year-old’s shattered public image.
Victimized by an elaborate homeroom smear campaign and regarded as a violent pathological liar by teachers, young Cyndi draws strength from research books and “Six Million Dollar Man” episodes about a reclusive Pacific Northwest monster that lashes out only when attacked. But there’s no retreating to the forest during a school assembly, at which classmates weigh in on the emotional cost of bullying — while the target of their wrath sits on display like a captured creature.
THEATER | I WAS A SIXTH GRADE BIGFOOT
Written & Performed by Cyndi Freeman
Directed by Sara Peters
A Frigid Festival Presentation
At UNDER St. Marks
94 St. Marks Place, btw. First Ave. & Ave. A
Feb 28, at 10:30 p.m.
March 4 at 8:50 p.m. March 8 at 5:10 p.m.
Tickets: $10, $8 for students/seniors|
Visit FRIGIDnewyork.info
Artist info: heroicsinhotpants.com
Joined on stage by a tiny Sasquatch action figure, Freeman’s heartbreaking anecdotes (filled with wry impressions of her cruel tormenters) often end with the performer out of breath and scanning the horizon for some sense of justice in the universe — or just going silent, letting us fill that momentary blank space with our own empathetic image of a friendless little girl who instinctively knows that oddball traits have a way of becoming great strengths. It helps, a little, that her engineering genius dad declares, “We Freemans are different” — while her mama grizzly makes a trip to principal’s office and growls, “I will tell you what I tell her…She is honest, honest to a fault.”
Freeman peppers her quest to expose grade school falsehoods with accounts of hoaxes perpetrated by major players in “American Bigfootery.” Making some disturbing observations about the ease with which we check our skepticism at the door when there’s a juicy tale to help spread, she nonetheless musters a bit of admiration for the conspirators who pulled their stunts more out of opportunism and boredom than a malicious desire to destroy another human being.
Revelations about the true nature of those much-hyped Sasquatch sightings are every bit as surprising as the “Where are they now?” tidbits, during which Freeman recalls accepting a string of emotional apologies that will one day enable her to reassure a troubled young girl that things change for the better — and sometimes, so do people.
Occasional basketball columnist and burlesque performer Sara Peters directs, making sure the potentially depressing story moves at a brisk pace towards its hopeful and wonderfully well-adjusted conclusion. And that’s the truth!
