THIS LILY WAS (FONTANA)
Best Female Solo Performance Award
2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Inhale. Impale. Exhale. Repeat. Seven suicide attempts. An arm embroidered with scars. Taking your salvation where you can get it: in myths and bibles both holy and profane, a blues legend howling along a dusty road, red velvet cake, a whispered sweet something in a language you will never understand.
Winner of the Best Female Solo Award at the 2004 San Francisco Fringe Festival for her show "some life", Mia Paschal returns with the story of a cutter, scarred and tethered to her brokenrunged ladder of a heart. Taking the audience on a voyage from Arkansas to Paris to Amsterdam, from Harvard to a Hungarian terrorist cell to a Milanese psych ward, Mia reveals a deeper truth that will resonate with anyone who has ever regarded suicide and self-harm from any angle and wondered “Why?”. It's all so absurd, it might even be funny. So... Inhale. Impale. Exhale. Repeat.
SFFringe audience members said: “It sings with a transcendent beauty”, “wonderful comedic moments”, “a truly excellent and courageous piece of theatre”, “pure poetry in motion”, “exceptional talent and stage presence”, “Mia transcends her pain and reigns triumphant”.
This Lily Was (Fontana) was awarded Best of the Fringe - Best Female Dramatic Solo at the San Francisco Fringe Festival 2006, and was selected as a Top Five Pick of the 2007 Rogue Performance Festival by the Fresno Bee.
AUDIENCE REVIEWS
2007 Rogue Performance Festival
Jaguar Bennett said...
This is a show that you must see. Mia Paschal communicates directly with her audience, effortlessly expresses an incredible range of emotions, exploring every aspect of her character. In an eyeblink, she moves from weeping despair to fiery defiance, from the depths of defeat to who gives a f*** insouciance. She's awesome. See it now.
kien lim said...
Stunningly powerful. Mia has touched my soul.
Sheri McClure-Baker said...
I had the pleasure of attending the opening performance of this show and I was amazed. I had read the comments on the website, but didn't really know what to expect. Mia Paschal did a fantastic job in both the creation and execution of her performance. At first, I felt a little like I was attending a Shakespearean play - I knew the words, but struggled to understand the meanings. However, as the show progressed her poetic language and multiple personas began to create a poignant and humorous mosaic of her life experiences. It was clear that this artist had spent a lot of time participating in self reflection to really understand who she is and what she needs and I only hope to be able to channel my own emotions through my own art forms in as successful a manner as Ms. Paschal did. A definite must see at the Rogue.
Joy said...
This is an absolutely riveting experience. I can't say enough about the absolutely seamless way this story is told through various voices, all by one woman.
I found myself alternately identifying with and marveling incredulously at the moods and emotions that carried me through this hour.
There are so many wonderful things to see at the Rogue... but this is definitely in my top three recommendations, without question. We are lucky to have the chance to see it here. LUCKY, I tell you.
pc munoz said...
This show is serious business. Shot through with intense personal confession and executed with pitch-perfect precision.....Mia Paschal's performance is a beautiful, wondrous thing. DON'T MISS THIS SHOW!
559rell said...
Brilliant! This performance evidences that falling upon greatness through a wide range of personal experience and post-experience examination CAN cause you to create and deliver a MASTERPIECE...If you're still sane enough to portray it ;-) Mia does it and it's a must see!!!
(PS: It's very intelligent. Trust me ;-)
jade ed girl said...
Wow, this grabbed me and kept me riveted. A very soulful, emotional journey. Beautifully written and extremely moving, this piece had me sitting with tears streaming down my face.
This was a fabulous show...
Christine said...
Mia Paschal is beautiful from the inside out, from the writer to the performer, even each character whether dreadfully flawed or not is beautiful and complete.
She reveals to us a painful past, allowing tangled voices inside to be freed, each taking turns to speak blatantly and honestly in their own unique voice and temperament, making her show so powerful and dynamic. She gives speech and life even to inanimate objects that can hurt her, and that’s talent, my dears.
Catch her shows if you can. She has two left, here at the Rogue. She’s not to be missed and neither is her story.
Barbara said...
Devastatingly honest and beautiful.
Out of the Void said...
-Mia's show ("This Lily Was (fontana)" is probably one of the most intense, well done, and electrifying performances that this town has (or will see) in a long time, (I think she nailed best female solo performance for SF Fringe in 2006.) I have not heard another performer nor viewer not come away stunned. (Jarah, seriously? if you missed this you'd be making a mistake.)
Liesl Garner said...
"You beautiful breath of fresh air - you amazing powerhouse on stage - you crisp, clean cut straight to my heart with your tales - you vibrant reverberating soul...
With your performance, you melted me, broke me, dashed me, and then, when I was a puddle of tears on the floor, you danced across the surface, walking on water, flying away free, embroidered yet unfettered. I looked up to see you swirling on vapors of applause and knew you would be well, knew that your art could save you, that as much as I wanted to scoop you up and kiss you and make it all better - you already had done that - you already stood powerful to kiss your own sorrows and sing of your rise from the ashes. Truly, we are in the presence of greatness!"
and Liesl also wrote...
First, there was the striking character of Mia Paschal - on stage at Full Circle Brewery - in a crowded, festive room, where people were having a hard time staying contained - their excitement over the beginning of the Rogue Festival pounding little exclamation points into the air until it buzzed and vibrated. Mia, still and sure, her stature as a performer making her seem ten feet tall in the silence before she spoke. The voice that followed - the tearing of the air, the power, the pounding in our chests as we reverberated her fury, her poise, her angst, and her smolder. The hush in the audience as we waited, hearts pounding, for every word she would utter, every pause in her speech, every look that shot through us. That was what first grabbed me; her fifteen minutes at Full Circle and I knew I had to have more. Seeing the full show was transforming. To see inside this woman's heart - to hear the voices that have shaped her or torn her to pieces, the beauty breaking through from inside her, the rage thrust upon her from outside, the tiny child who survived and grew to dominate a stage with her presence, to fill the space of her own devotion. This Lily Was - This Lily Is - This Lily Always Will Be a Power of Reckoning. Bravo, Beautiful Embroidered, Lovely Girl!!
2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Reviewer: John Rackham
Intense, fascinating and poetic. I've had to take a couple of days to think about Mia's epic story of sexual and physical abuse and its lifelong consequences. It demanded full attention for the hour and with a lesser actor it might have been difficult to watch at times, but Mia's charisma carried me through. I think I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come. A truly excellent and courageous piece of theatre.
Reviewer: Jacqui Barnes
5 Stars
Mia Paschal transcends her pain and reigns triumphant. This spectacle is pure poetry in motion. Whatever you do, if she's performing within a 100mile radius of where you are, you have to see it.
Reviewer: Chip
5 Stars
Intensely personal, moving, poetic, lyrical, and mesmerizing.
An intelligent, beautiful and extraordinary performance.
Reviewer: todd branscum
5 Stars
What can I say Mia has an exceptional talent and stage presence. She glided back and forth like a gazelle across the tiny little stage with poise and dignity telling a story of pain and shame. A story too many of us know or has known someone who has fallen victim to circumstance like this Lily.The lighting was excellent and lent a more realistic tone when Mia would transition from one character or voice to another. The performance not only touched a dark place within but also had lighter sides that let the audience laugh and decompress from the seriousness and depressing plight of the Lily. This struck a unique balance that let the material gel so the audience could take in the reality of the situation. All in all I love Mia in her performance and I urge everyone to see it. So come out tonight or Saturday to see her before this event takes its place in history.
Reviewer: Mary Walls
5 Stars
Lyrical, poetic, and simply beautiful - This Lily Was provides a riveting dramatized view of the life of a "cutter." The bits of humor thrown in help lighten the mood of the subject matter, as well as remind us of the mind's ability to find humor even in the darkest moments. Mia Paschal's performance is simply quite stellar!
Reviewer: Dan Carbone
5 Stars
Beautifully acted and directed. A deeply moving satire that delves into the inner mind of a woman in deep turmoil, and the sharply etched portraits of those around her. It sings with a transcendent beauty that will stay with you long after the play has ended.
Reviewer: Rob Anderson
4 Stars
Ms. Paschal takes the difficult subject of a "cutter" and delves deep into her psyche through the most beautifully poetic prose. The spare staging focuses all of your attention on her words.
Reviewer: Wanda
5 Stars
Because of my love of Mia Paschal’s previous SFFringe work, Some Life, I invited a friend to see her latest production This Lily Was (Fontana). At dinner, my friend mentioned that she hadn’t seen a serious movie or play in a while because she can no longer stomach too much reality. She told me that she finds so much of life disturbing and depressing that she only seeks out entertainment that will leave her feeling happy. So it was with some trepidation that I took her to see this story about a cutter.
It is true that at times this play is difficult to experience because it deals with abuse, death, and despair. However, as she did in Some Life, Mia has infused her performance with wonderful comedic moments. She mines humor from her own missteps as well as the judgmental, selfish and sometimes ridiculous behavior of others. What struck me most about her performance was the fact that she had the courage to acknowledge culpability in some of her most disturbing adult episodes while at the same time revealing a painful and abusive childhood that she had no control over. She avoids all manner of cliches about triumphing over tragedy or being damaged by one’s past. For me, this piece was about the hard task of unblinkingly examining yourself, your life, and your choices. It was about making sense out of what you have done and what has been done to you.
When the performance ended, I looked over at my friend and saw that she was wiping away tears. I thought oh, no, I really did it this time. I asked her if she was okay and she gave me an enthusiastic yes. She told me that this was one of the most moving and powerful performances she had seen in years and that the stories told were amazing. She thanked me for inviting her.
Reviewer: M
4 Stars
Brutally honest yet poetic and fascinating. Mia creatively presents different facets of the mind and experiences of a scarred life.
Reviewer: ep
5 Stars
the show is very personal, very honest - sometimes stream-of-consciousness surreal; sometimes discomfortingly literal. Mia opens a vein and shares her story with beautiful, poetic language, razor-sharp focus, and a full-embrace of the blues.
CRITICS' REVIEWS
San Francisco performer Mia Paschal tried to commit suicide seven times. "I was tired of myself," she says in This Lily Was (Fontana), her searing and (unsurprisingly) serious solo-performance show.
Paschal is a gifted entertainer, and she commands the stage from the moment she takes it with a non-nonsense vocal strut. Following various threads of her life, including horrific childhood memories of abuse, she fuses philosophical digressions with concrete biographical jolts in a sweeping, ambitious monologue. At heart she tries to answer THE question: Why does a person try to commit suicide?
The answer, she suggests, is simple: to shock, to jar, to shake up a life.
At one point in New York, she says, she took an overdose of Valium. And she remembers the utter and complete feeling of happiness she experienced realizing she had made the right choice. She was so happy, she says, that she called a suicide hotline to tell the workers there the news. Which is what saved her, of course.
It's those kinds of inconsistencies that make suicide so complex, and Paschal's glimpse at the inner workings of a person undergoing such turmoil are raw and real. Using a well-chosen musical score, she replicates the din of an addled mind unsure whether or not to harm one's own body. To make that "noise" go away, she would slice the inside of her arm. Self-mutilation became an intermediate step to suicide: something she could inflict upon herself and still cling to life.
If all this sounds heavy, it is. (There are some comedic elements, but all in all, it's a somber piece.) There are times when "This Lily Was (Fontana)" gets bogged down in its own abstraction. It drifts so far away from the concrete terms of Paschal's life that it risks losing an audience. Savagely deep intellectual concepts might triumph on the printed page, but in a spoken-word performance, sometimes what's needed most is clarity.
Still, the show is strong and moving. Paschal is a tough, triumphant presence. And the best thing is: She's still here.
Donald Munro, The Fresno Bee (2007)
A Fresno Bee Top Five Pick of the Rogue Performance Festival
Photo: Mark Wilson
Best Female Solo Performance Award
2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Inhale. Impale. Exhale. Repeat. Seven suicide attempts. An arm embroidered with scars. Taking your salvation where you can get it: in myths and bibles both holy and profane, a blues legend howling along a dusty road, red velvet cake, a whispered sweet something in a language you will never understand.
Winner of the Best Female Solo Award at the 2004 San Francisco Fringe Festival for her show "some life", Mia Paschal returns with the story of a cutter, scarred and tethered to her brokenrunged ladder of a heart. Taking the audience on a voyage from Arkansas to Paris to Amsterdam, from Harvard to a Hungarian terrorist cell to a Milanese psych ward, Mia reveals a deeper truth that will resonate with anyone who has ever regarded suicide and self-harm from any angle and wondered “Why?”. It's all so absurd, it might even be funny. So... Inhale. Impale. Exhale. Repeat.
SFFringe audience members said: “It sings with a transcendent beauty”, “wonderful comedic moments”, “a truly excellent and courageous piece of theatre”, “pure poetry in motion”, “exceptional talent and stage presence”, “Mia transcends her pain and reigns triumphant”.
This Lily Was (Fontana) was awarded Best of the Fringe - Best Female Dramatic Solo at the San Francisco Fringe Festival 2006, and was selected as a Top Five Pick of the 2007 Rogue Performance Festival by the Fresno Bee.
AUDIENCE REVIEWS
2007 Rogue Performance Festival
Jaguar Bennett said...
This is a show that you must see. Mia Paschal communicates directly with her audience, effortlessly expresses an incredible range of emotions, exploring every aspect of her character. In an eyeblink, she moves from weeping despair to fiery defiance, from the depths of defeat to who gives a f*** insouciance. She's awesome. See it now.
kien lim said...
Stunningly powerful. Mia has touched my soul.
Sheri McClure-Baker said...
I had the pleasure of attending the opening performance of this show and I was amazed. I had read the comments on the website, but didn't really know what to expect. Mia Paschal did a fantastic job in both the creation and execution of her performance. At first, I felt a little like I was attending a Shakespearean play - I knew the words, but struggled to understand the meanings. However, as the show progressed her poetic language and multiple personas began to create a poignant and humorous mosaic of her life experiences. It was clear that this artist had spent a lot of time participating in self reflection to really understand who she is and what she needs and I only hope to be able to channel my own emotions through my own art forms in as successful a manner as Ms. Paschal did. A definite must see at the Rogue.
Joy said...
This is an absolutely riveting experience. I can't say enough about the absolutely seamless way this story is told through various voices, all by one woman.
I found myself alternately identifying with and marveling incredulously at the moods and emotions that carried me through this hour.
There are so many wonderful things to see at the Rogue... but this is definitely in my top three recommendations, without question. We are lucky to have the chance to see it here. LUCKY, I tell you.
pc munoz said...
This show is serious business. Shot through with intense personal confession and executed with pitch-perfect precision.....Mia Paschal's performance is a beautiful, wondrous thing. DON'T MISS THIS SHOW!
559rell said...
Brilliant! This performance evidences that falling upon greatness through a wide range of personal experience and post-experience examination CAN cause you to create and deliver a MASTERPIECE...If you're still sane enough to portray it ;-) Mia does it and it's a must see!!!
(PS: It's very intelligent. Trust me ;-)
jade ed girl said...
Wow, this grabbed me and kept me riveted. A very soulful, emotional journey. Beautifully written and extremely moving, this piece had me sitting with tears streaming down my face.
This was a fabulous show...
Christine said...
Mia Paschal is beautiful from the inside out, from the writer to the performer, even each character whether dreadfully flawed or not is beautiful and complete.
She reveals to us a painful past, allowing tangled voices inside to be freed, each taking turns to speak blatantly and honestly in their own unique voice and temperament, making her show so powerful and dynamic. She gives speech and life even to inanimate objects that can hurt her, and that’s talent, my dears.
Catch her shows if you can. She has two left, here at the Rogue. She’s not to be missed and neither is her story.
Barbara said...
Devastatingly honest and beautiful.
Out of the Void said...
-Mia's show ("This Lily Was (fontana)" is probably one of the most intense, well done, and electrifying performances that this town has (or will see) in a long time, (I think she nailed best female solo performance for SF Fringe in 2006.) I have not heard another performer nor viewer not come away stunned. (Jarah, seriously? if you missed this you'd be making a mistake.)
Liesl Garner said...
"You beautiful breath of fresh air - you amazing powerhouse on stage - you crisp, clean cut straight to my heart with your tales - you vibrant reverberating soul...
With your performance, you melted me, broke me, dashed me, and then, when I was a puddle of tears on the floor, you danced across the surface, walking on water, flying away free, embroidered yet unfettered. I looked up to see you swirling on vapors of applause and knew you would be well, knew that your art could save you, that as much as I wanted to scoop you up and kiss you and make it all better - you already had done that - you already stood powerful to kiss your own sorrows and sing of your rise from the ashes. Truly, we are in the presence of greatness!"
and Liesl also wrote...
First, there was the striking character of Mia Paschal - on stage at Full Circle Brewery - in a crowded, festive room, where people were having a hard time staying contained - their excitement over the beginning of the Rogue Festival pounding little exclamation points into the air until it buzzed and vibrated. Mia, still and sure, her stature as a performer making her seem ten feet tall in the silence before she spoke. The voice that followed - the tearing of the air, the power, the pounding in our chests as we reverberated her fury, her poise, her angst, and her smolder. The hush in the audience as we waited, hearts pounding, for every word she would utter, every pause in her speech, every look that shot through us. That was what first grabbed me; her fifteen minutes at Full Circle and I knew I had to have more. Seeing the full show was transforming. To see inside this woman's heart - to hear the voices that have shaped her or torn her to pieces, the beauty breaking through from inside her, the rage thrust upon her from outside, the tiny child who survived and grew to dominate a stage with her presence, to fill the space of her own devotion. This Lily Was - This Lily Is - This Lily Always Will Be a Power of Reckoning. Bravo, Beautiful Embroidered, Lovely Girl!!
2006 San Francisco Fringe Festival
Reviewer: John Rackham
Intense, fascinating and poetic. I've had to take a couple of days to think about Mia's epic story of sexual and physical abuse and its lifelong consequences. It demanded full attention for the hour and with a lesser actor it might have been difficult to watch at times, but Mia's charisma carried me through. I think I'll be thinking about it for a long time to come. A truly excellent and courageous piece of theatre.
Reviewer: Jacqui Barnes
5 Stars
Mia Paschal transcends her pain and reigns triumphant. This spectacle is pure poetry in motion. Whatever you do, if she's performing within a 100mile radius of where you are, you have to see it.
Reviewer: Chip
5 Stars
Intensely personal, moving, poetic, lyrical, and mesmerizing.
An intelligent, beautiful and extraordinary performance.
Reviewer: todd branscum
5 Stars
What can I say Mia has an exceptional talent and stage presence. She glided back and forth like a gazelle across the tiny little stage with poise and dignity telling a story of pain and shame. A story too many of us know or has known someone who has fallen victim to circumstance like this Lily.The lighting was excellent and lent a more realistic tone when Mia would transition from one character or voice to another. The performance not only touched a dark place within but also had lighter sides that let the audience laugh and decompress from the seriousness and depressing plight of the Lily. This struck a unique balance that let the material gel so the audience could take in the reality of the situation. All in all I love Mia in her performance and I urge everyone to see it. So come out tonight or Saturday to see her before this event takes its place in history.
Reviewer: Mary Walls
5 Stars
Lyrical, poetic, and simply beautiful - This Lily Was provides a riveting dramatized view of the life of a "cutter." The bits of humor thrown in help lighten the mood of the subject matter, as well as remind us of the mind's ability to find humor even in the darkest moments. Mia Paschal's performance is simply quite stellar!
Reviewer: Dan Carbone
5 Stars
Beautifully acted and directed. A deeply moving satire that delves into the inner mind of a woman in deep turmoil, and the sharply etched portraits of those around her. It sings with a transcendent beauty that will stay with you long after the play has ended.
Reviewer: Rob Anderson
4 Stars
Ms. Paschal takes the difficult subject of a "cutter" and delves deep into her psyche through the most beautifully poetic prose. The spare staging focuses all of your attention on her words.
Reviewer: Wanda
5 Stars
Because of my love of Mia Paschal’s previous SFFringe work, Some Life, I invited a friend to see her latest production This Lily Was (Fontana). At dinner, my friend mentioned that she hadn’t seen a serious movie or play in a while because she can no longer stomach too much reality. She told me that she finds so much of life disturbing and depressing that she only seeks out entertainment that will leave her feeling happy. So it was with some trepidation that I took her to see this story about a cutter.
It is true that at times this play is difficult to experience because it deals with abuse, death, and despair. However, as she did in Some Life, Mia has infused her performance with wonderful comedic moments. She mines humor from her own missteps as well as the judgmental, selfish and sometimes ridiculous behavior of others. What struck me most about her performance was the fact that she had the courage to acknowledge culpability in some of her most disturbing adult episodes while at the same time revealing a painful and abusive childhood that she had no control over. She avoids all manner of cliches about triumphing over tragedy or being damaged by one’s past. For me, this piece was about the hard task of unblinkingly examining yourself, your life, and your choices. It was about making sense out of what you have done and what has been done to you.
When the performance ended, I looked over at my friend and saw that she was wiping away tears. I thought oh, no, I really did it this time. I asked her if she was okay and she gave me an enthusiastic yes. She told me that this was one of the most moving and powerful performances she had seen in years and that the stories told were amazing. She thanked me for inviting her.
Reviewer: M
4 Stars
Brutally honest yet poetic and fascinating. Mia creatively presents different facets of the mind and experiences of a scarred life.
Reviewer: ep
5 Stars
the show is very personal, very honest - sometimes stream-of-consciousness surreal; sometimes discomfortingly literal. Mia opens a vein and shares her story with beautiful, poetic language, razor-sharp focus, and a full-embrace of the blues.
CRITICS' REVIEWS
San Francisco performer Mia Paschal tried to commit suicide seven times. "I was tired of myself," she says in This Lily Was (Fontana), her searing and (unsurprisingly) serious solo-performance show.
Paschal is a gifted entertainer, and she commands the stage from the moment she takes it with a non-nonsense vocal strut. Following various threads of her life, including horrific childhood memories of abuse, she fuses philosophical digressions with concrete biographical jolts in a sweeping, ambitious monologue. At heart she tries to answer THE question: Why does a person try to commit suicide?
The answer, she suggests, is simple: to shock, to jar, to shake up a life.
At one point in New York, she says, she took an overdose of Valium. And she remembers the utter and complete feeling of happiness she experienced realizing she had made the right choice. She was so happy, she says, that she called a suicide hotline to tell the workers there the news. Which is what saved her, of course.
It's those kinds of inconsistencies that make suicide so complex, and Paschal's glimpse at the inner workings of a person undergoing such turmoil are raw and real. Using a well-chosen musical score, she replicates the din of an addled mind unsure whether or not to harm one's own body. To make that "noise" go away, she would slice the inside of her arm. Self-mutilation became an intermediate step to suicide: something she could inflict upon herself and still cling to life.
If all this sounds heavy, it is. (There are some comedic elements, but all in all, it's a somber piece.) There are times when "This Lily Was (Fontana)" gets bogged down in its own abstraction. It drifts so far away from the concrete terms of Paschal's life that it risks losing an audience. Savagely deep intellectual concepts might triumph on the printed page, but in a spoken-word performance, sometimes what's needed most is clarity.
Still, the show is strong and moving. Paschal is a tough, triumphant presence. And the best thing is: She's still here.
Donald Munro, The Fresno Bee (2007)
A Fresno Bee Top Five Pick of the Rogue Performance Festival
Photo: Mark Wilson