Leave it to the Welders to aftermath a comedy by a designer. Deb Sivigny’s “Hello, My Name Is . . . ” is a affecting accession that roams through an old abode in the District’s Takoma Park adjacency for audiences of about 15 at a time, immersing admirers in the apple of mostly Korean adoptees growing up in America.
You apprehend adroitness from the Welders, a playwriting aggregate that changes associates every three years. (The accepted accumulation is the Welders’ additional class.) The accouterments generates its hits and misses, but with contempo ventures that accommodate Stephen Spottswood’s aggressive arts-themed “The Babe in the Red Corner” and Alexandra Petri’s cyber-savvy “To Acquaint My Story: A Hamlet Fanfic,” you feel the accumulation not alone breeding new scripts but additionally exploring beginning means to use the stage.
Sivigny does abroad with the date altogether. Audiences accumulate on the advanced balustrade of the old abode that’s now the apish Rhizome DC and are ushered into the active allowance for snacks. You’re guided to the advanced anteroom to acceptable a 6-year-old babe to this allegedly Minnesota home. You can acquaint how to chase the activity as it moves admiral to a baby bedchamber lined with dolls, area the new babe agilely examines aggregate about her. In the abutting room, a loud American-born babe tries to get the absorption of a Korean boy who wants to address to his mom.
There’s an chaste calligraphy here, ably acted by administrator Randy Baker’s casting of eight, but for the aboriginal bisected of its 90 account the affair of home works added by atmosphere than by dialogue. The abrupt babble ability not authority a accepted stage, yet a heart-to-heart babble is acute as you eavesdrop about a blaze pit in the advanced yard, and you’re allotment of the toasts as a bells accession gets awkward out back. You clue three capital abstracts into adulthood, and by the time they eventually accommodated in a Seoul restaurant. Sivigny has accurately set the table for nuanced arguments about acceptance behavior in Korea and the American bureau that insists it’s accomplishing good.
The accepted new “Safe as Houses,” on the added hand, gets ashore answer itself afresh and afresh as a altered affectionate of burst ancestors has a “Twilight Zone” moment. It’s Valentine’s Day, and Isabel is adulatory with her additional bedmate back her aboriginal bedmate walks in out of a storm — not acumen 10 years accept passed.
Occasionally, Jonathan Miot, as Bedmate No. 1, busts out of the Logan Fringe Arts Space (where the comedy is actuality premiered by Pinky Swear Productions) and assimilate Florida Avenue. But about the four actors are stagily bedridden in administrator Megan Behm’s functionally angry production, which is bedeviled by a rain-splattered windowpane upstage. Too little of author Natalie Ann Piegari’s fantasy passes basal believability tests, and too abundant overwritten babble is composed of addled variations on “I don’t understand.” Copy that.
Hello, My Name Is . . ., by Deb Sivigny. Directed by Randy Baker. Set dresser/props design, Patti Kalil; costumes, Frank Labovitz; complete design, Roc Lee; lights, Katie McCreary; choreography, Yasmin Tuazon. With Wyckham Avery, Linda Bard, Janine Baumgardner, Julie Garner, Jon Jon Johnson, Jennifer Knight, Momo Nakamura and Emily Sucher. Through Nov. 12 at Rhizome DC, 6950 Maple St. NW. Tickets $40. Appointment thewelders.org.
Safe as Houses, by Natalie Ann Piegari. Directed by Megan Behm. Set, Jessica Cancino; lights and video design, John D. Alexander; costumes, Liz Gossens; complete design, Kevin Alexander. With Carolyn Kashner, Annie Ottati and Patrick M. Doneghy. Through Nov. 11 at Trinidad Theater in the Logan Fringe Arts Space, 1358 Florida Ave. NE. Tickets $35. Call 866-811-4111 or appointment pinkyswear-productions.com.
