In musicals, when emotions become intense or complicated, the characters will break out into a song. In opera it's an aria, and in Shakespeare it's the soliloquy. In a Sara Felder show, she breaks out into a juggle.
Out of Sight is a recent solo work from the actress-comedian-juggler, who has been away from SF stages for seven years as she lived and developed new works in Philadelphia. That's where Out of Sight had its premiere, and it's a treat to have her back in our city – and notably at the Marsh, where she performed many of her previous projects.
In the 80-minute piece, Felder digs into her personal scrapbook to build a story of a mother's passions, opera, Jewish history, lesbian love, and the state of Israel. With juggling. And, occasionally, with puppets, too.
The result is a heartfelt collage that is always engaging and often imaginative. The stories that Felder weaves together have charged underpinnings, but she adopts mostly a mild tone coupled with easy-going humor. If the pieces actually fit together, it isn't snugly, but the goodwill that Felder generates helps caulk most of the gaps.
The piece's title, Out of Sight, finds its most literal reference in her mother's failing eyes, a progressing blindness that she managed to hide from her daughter for several years, and props up a loose bit of physical comedy involving multiple pairs of eyeglasses, binoculars, and a telescope.
"But my mother read me bedtime stories," Felder says, before realizing that her mother told her bedtime stories. In this recounting of the past, those stories often involved the plight of the Jews and their need for a homeland – though sometimes with bunnies, squirrels, and gerbils standing in for the human protagonists.
This segues to Felder's own junior-year-abroad adventures in Israel, where she reunites with an old friend who has become an Orthodox Jew. She wants to dance the hora again with him at a wedding, as they once did so joyously only a few years ago, but is shocked to find that the mixing of sexes is taboo in this culture. Same-sex unions can also be troublesome, at least when Felder falls in love with an impassioned Zionist who rejects Felder's political hesitations about Israeli politics.
But while the relationship is still burning bright, Felder shows how juggling can be a sensual art form as she manipulates several orbs as the old Duke Ellington song "Hit Me with a Hot Note" plays. Later, when she visits a Palestinian refugee camp, Felder creates a poignant visual metaphor manipulating a pile of wooden blocks.
David O'Connor directed the evenly paced production, with the enchanting, if not clearly pertinent, shadow puppets created by Morgan FitzPatrick Andrews. The biggest pleasure of Out of Sight is simply having Sara Felder back in town, where her humanistic message is again in a mutual embrace with local audiences.
Out of Sight will run at the Marsh through Feb. 13. Tickets are $20-$35. Call (800) 838-3006 or go to www.themarsh.org.