The sixth annual New Orleans Fringe Festival presented multimedia performance, Ice Scream Theater by C.M. Soto, directed by John LaTier, and starring Nicole “Niqui Love” Lovince on November 20, 22, 23, 24 2014 at The Old Firehouse (718 Mandeville St., New Orleans).
Surround-sound theater assaults the senses in this story of a young girl’s escape from drug addiction. A chilling narrative and unnerving video illuminates her journey from being an addict’s child to becoming an addict, then mother herself. Avant-garde ballads and dance punctuate this true story by C.M. Soto. Ice Scream Theater echoes Pink Floyd’s, The Wall and Tom Waits’, “What’s he Building in There?”
Brought up in a drug-house, ten-year-old Vinylux retreats into her imagination. It is here that the house takes on a life of its own: her dolls become syringes, her blankets gauze. Her mother is reduced to a chalk outline. In her mind’s eye, the house is a predator, closing in on her. Vinylux succumbs to the Eighties drug scene. Pressured into being a surrogate mother to her two siblings and over stimulated by the adult world of drug addiction, she abandons her mother’s house to begin her re-education. Set to a score of original music and thought-provoking dance, Ice Scream Theater is a survivor’s story. Lastly, it is a love story told by a daughter who loved her mother more than her mother loved herself.
Like the photos, the ten poems featured in Ice Scream Theater appear in the author’s photography and poetry chapbook, These are the Rooms to My Mother’s House .
C.M.SOTO 