Sunday, August 14, 2016

Fringe Festival 2016: "Lazy Eyed Geek"

Day: 10

Show: 47


Category: Drama

By: The Theatre Cosmic

Created by: Brandon Taitt

Location: Strike Theater

Summary: A solo storytelling show by a man born with one blind and "lazy" eye and a love of Star Trek.

Highlights: Perhaps what the Fringe does best is give artists a platform on which to tell their story. In this case the artist is Brandon Taitt, who tells his story with honesty and without artifice. From being born to a teenage mother, his multiple surgeries that failed to correct the strabismus he was born with (a word that reminds me of that line from Spelling Bee, another example of popular culture's unfairly comic portrayal of people with a lazy eye), his many problems with bullies in school, the comfort he found in the world of Star Trek and Spock in particular, the death of his grandmother, and through adulthood and the birth of his own perfectly healthy child. Lazy Eyed Geek is funny, relatable to anyone who's ever felt like an outsider, with a full circle ending of healing.