Elizabeth Baron
Directing Reviews
Yay America!
"Masterful clowning"
"Perfectly timed, well-crafted comedy"
"‘Yay America!’ is a hit that I would highly recommend.
Strongly written and excellently delivered, I am
definitely going to see this show again!"
- PortFringe Review Team
Hi. (How Are You?)
Rodeo Debbie is an unforgettable character and in this stage show program she delivers an essence both contained and exuberant. Her ability to connect with the audience is both warm and a little eerie. The structure of the hour caters to my interests of art making on stage and curious props. Hi how are you opened my eyes to more possibilities in theater.
-Katarina Countiss,
San Francisco Fringe audience member
I loved it! What a joy to spend time with these characters, these voices, these ruminations, these passions and curiosities. Most of all, what a joy to watch Karen's immense talents on display, shifting between these different personae and embodying these disparate, beautiful, grotesque, absurd, harrowing spirits. [...] I appreciated them all as elliptical, thoughtful meditations on conflicting attitudes of power.
-Joshua Fesi: writer, creator, producer, Brooklyn NY
Wallaby Way
A passionate, intimate, emotionally-charged show...This show only solidifies my opinion that she is a gift to solo theatre.
-Audience member
Agamemnon
...Elizabeth Baron plays all the characters in LaLa Theater's new version of "Agamemnon," Aeschylus' story of a Greek king poisoned by his own fateful decision.
Baron doesn't inhabit the eight characters so much as she invites them in and they inhabit her.
-Mark Collins,
Daily Camera
hi! (entering burned area)
...we’re drawn ever deeper into this strange little character’s closed-off world. Subtle uses of mime create her empty house, the woods, rocks and the isolation that engulfs her, all of which she creates from the dark of a black box set.
However, when we reach the burned area, it becomes a surprising metaphor for the way destruction often leads to new life – whether it’s in nature or in people.
Requiem For a Snowflake
Requiem is a brilliant production, soloing an absolutely brilliant actor, Bobby Dartt. The character Petey, a clown, IMMEDIATELY draws you into his world, and everything else around you falls away. Peteys stories bring out deep, authentic belly laughs, and then you find yourself shifted to a place deep in your heart. Petey has the voice of innocence and wisdom, and the audience walks away with substleties that arise even hours after the show.
-Nancy Trojanowski,
audience member
52 Pick Up
If you can only go to one show this festival, 52 Pick Up would be a good choice. Fifty two playing cards are thrown into the air. Each card dictates a scene that Gemma Wilcox and Sam Elmore perform in the order they are chosen, gradually revealing a romantic relationship that is complex, funny, infuriating, passionate, Mars vs. Venus typical, funny (oh, did I already say funny?, well, it’s very funny), and frighteningly familiar.
... I found myself counting the number of cards left on stage, wishing there were more. This show is clearly the work of experts...
The Last Show You'll Ever See
That background shows in this one-woman play, which is directed by Elizabeth Baron. Clumsiness is Foster's stock in trade -- a controlled anarchy that seems just this side of simply bumbling around. She grabs your attention first by the sheer plainness of her act -- it could almost be amateur night at the show-off corral -- but you realize quickly that method and skill are behind the bumbling: She's making herself a fool for a purpose. And her purpose is to disarm you with her character's fears so your own don't feel so terrible, after all...
-
Bob Hicks, The Oregonian
Prowling the Abyss
I went through stages of avoidance, looking away [...] because I’ve been taught to see my own femme nature as a joke or something to use to manipulate men, not something to just be. ...
I thought about the categories we are put into as women and actors. [...] It made me think about de Beauvoir’s opening statement about no one being born a woman, but becoming one from learning her role.
-Alyssa K. Simon: actress, NYC
Magical Mystery Detour
At its heart, “Magical Mystery Detour” is a one-woman road-trip play, which sounds odd, I know, but it delivers on its promise. It’s wacky and fun with just enough emotional kick to keep it … “cultural” let’s say.
-
Josh Tehee,
Fresno Bee Hive
Hi. (How Are You?)
This performer invites the audience to look inside themselves and share their feelings, A risky business indeed. I enjoyed her assessment of these sentiments opening and exploring them to great avail. Later Poetry was assembled using the cut up method and audience participation. I sincerely enjoyed this production and remained captivated throughout.
-Steven Keena
52 Pick Up
...This is provocative, eerily personal theatre...
The scenes are brisk, some no more than 20 seconds long, and they are achingly (or hilariously) familiar. There’s the awkward first home invite — 'If you think this is messy, you should see my place'— the tense silences, and the inside jokes that aren’t funny to anyone else. And, of course, there’s the fighting...
As Wilcox and Elmore sailed through the story, we almost doubted that the scenes were not in scripted order: the exposition seemed too thoughtfully crafted. But therein lies the beauty. The scenes are random, but so intimate that the viewer’s memories fill in the gaps.
-TJ Dawe & Rita Bozi, Winnipeg Free Press
Requiem For a Snowflake
This show is amazing from the very first moment. Petey is at his finest taking you on a roller coaster ride of joy & playfulness, love & kisses, tenderness & compassion. He always gives you something to THINK about. He takes you places you never thought youd go but always brings you back safely. A SHOW NOT TO BE MISSED!
-Erika, audience member
The Last Show You'll Ever See
... Foster's a fool, in the grand old sense of someone who approaches truth by smashing convention and cloaking her transgression with a laugh. The New Vaudeville movement, which started in the 1960s by reclaiming the magic-on-the-cheap skills of the old vaudeville circuit and crossing them with the disciplines of European circus and mime, is getting a little white in the whiskers itself. But it keeps inspiring fresh generations of performers and reminding audiences that a show can be simple and direct and create its bells and whistles in the mind instead of the computer board.
-Bob Hicks, The Oregonian
52 Pick Up
This is my favorite of the entire Fringe this year, what else can I say? An original idea that touched on a universal experience. Brilliant and beautiful. It rocked me and left me uplifted. Though that was the luck of the draw!
-Lauren Spivey, audience member