Multi-talented #TCTheater artist Max Wojtanowicz's solo musical
Ball: A Musical Tribute to My Lost Testicle was my favorite show of the 2016 Minnesota Fringe Festival, because it was so funny and poignant, so raw and emotional, so cleverly and smartly put together. At the time, Max was just about six months removed from a diagnosis of stage 3 testicular cancer, and started writing the show during treatment, with help from director and frequent collaborator Nikki Swoboda, and composers Andrew Cooke, Michael Gruber, and Jason Hansen. He toured the show for a couple of years after that, and even brought it back to the Southern in 2018, before performing at a festival in NYC. And now, ten years cancer free, Max is performing the show for two short weekends at Artistry. It's still just about an hour long, still set in 2016, but with a few tweaks to make it make sense today. If anything, the show has gotten better with time and perspective; Max is still able to tap back into the emotions of the moment, but with perhaps more clarity or insight looking back on it.
There are only five performances left, so if you're looking for a great solo show that is personal and universal, and very well written and performed,
Ball is it!
What follows is
my review of the 2018 production, with a few tweaks for things that have changed or been updated.
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| photo by Jenna Oslin |
In just about an hour, Max shares his cancer experience with us through songs and stories, in a very personable and real way. He used to refer to the script on a music stand, but for this iteration, which he said really feels like the culmination of the work, he speaks from memory, and from the heart. The show feels very conversational, very informal, very natural, but also very polished in construction and delivery. Max shares funny and insightful stories about the diagnosis, treatment, side effects, and the way it all affected his relationships with friends, colleagues, and boyfriend (now husband!). In a particularly poignant moment, he compares his experience with cancer (a relatively treatable kind with a high rate of survival) to his father's experience with terminal cancer, a difficult fight that ended seventeen years ago (since last seeing this show I have also lost my dad, so that part hit a little deeper this time). You don't have to have experience with cancer to be moved by and relate to the theme of the uncertainty and fragility of life. "Crazy business this, this life we live in. Can't complain about the time we're given." Max sings these lyrics from Sondheim's
Anyone Can Whistle (
which he directed for MMT last year) a few times in the show, with more meaning each time.
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| photo by Jenna Oslin |
Max worked with three composers (Jason Hansen, Michael Gruber, and Andrew Cooke) on the songs, which are really fun, catchy, clever, and memorable (cast recording, please!). And of course, a one-person show is never really that. In addition to this creative collaboration, Max is accompanied onstage by Walter Tambor on piano, providing an almost constant musical score in what's more like a conversation. They perform on a mostly bare stage in Artistry's intimate black box theater, with just a stool, IV poles holding colorful bags, a table full of meds and Purell wheeled out from behind a medical curtain, and a few props (including a super fun puppet and many, many hats). The lighting (designed by Grant Merges) changes color and intensity with the story.
This is the kind of beautiful solo show in which an artist turns pain into art, telling their specific story in a way that's healing not just for them, but for anyone that hears it (see also: Larissa FastHorse's solo show Fancy Dancer, now playing at History Theatre). Max is so naturally funny, so gorgeous of voice, and in this piece truly shares his heart and soul with the audience. I'll never forget the feeling in the Southern when Max first did this show, so raw and immediate and communal, and seeing it again was a really wonderful full circle moment that was just as powerful, in a different way.
