Hollywood Fringe Festival 2018: ‘Snow Fridge’ (Review)

Roll the dice, and take a gamble on pure imagination

Editor’s note & disclosure statement: this review contains what could be considered “spoilers,” but because of the nature of ‘Snow Fridge’ each performance is unique. The structure will be similar, but the contents vary wildly from patron to patron. ‘Snow Fridge’ co-creator Karlie Blair is a contributor to No Proscenium, but she has had no editorial input on this review, nor has she been privy to its contents before publication.

As a general rule, I try to keep my experiences spoiler-free. I appreciate being told what to wear on occasion, but I like to let the events and the characters speak for themselves. And boy, am I glad I did for Snow Fridge. It’s one of those shows that you cannot really describe in a way that fully captures what it is.

The name itself brought up a lot of questions for me, and while I don’t pretend to have a perfect grasp on it (I was calling it both Snow Fall and Snow Fringe at certain points prior to the event), I have a better understanding now that I’ve fallen.

I sit at a table in an old, historic restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. On the table lies a note. “Roll the dice and draw a card.” I roll the dice and as it falls, look around for a deck of cards. There are no cards to be found, but a set of markers and blank pages. I look back at the dice. It lands on a blank side. Upon further investigation, I realize that all of the sides are blank. Now I can’t explain why, but when I realized that, I rolled the dice again. It then dawned on me that the card we were to draw was not in a deck. It was in our imagination. We were to bring it to life with the markers and blank paper. The longer I sit at this table, the more I began to open up my imagination, to realize that the blank papers and the blank dice aren’t necessarily empty, they’re just waiting to be filled.

This small pre-show helps set the tone and get you in the mindset for what you are about to experience.

After a few moments at the table, someone comes to collect you. They take a second to reflect on what you rolled on the dice and what card you drew, but then it’s time to fall.

After walking down an old, yet well-preserved set of stairs with your host, you come upon a door. He knocks and the door slowly creaks open. You are welcomed in by a woman in silver. She stands next to you, but speaks to you through your reflection in a large, and imperfect mirror. She holds a lantern as she introduces you to the idea of the snow fridge. She explains that when you dream, every character in your dream is you—for better or for worse. She continues that with this in mind, one can learn and grow by opening up their mind to the ideas expressed in your dreams (Or something. To be perfectly honest, I was very distracted by the anticipation of what was yet to happen and while I did my best to absorb her words in that moment, like most dreams, the exact details seemed to be quite hard to hold on to, like a fistful of water). After this brief introduction, she asks if I’m ready to fall. A “yes” answer has her requesting that I close my eyes, and she walks me backwards into Snow Fridge.

I am guided backwards slowly, eyes closed for a few feet, as “Hello, Briana” is spoken to me by what sounds like 10 different voices.

I could even swear that one voice was me, although the logistics behind that make no sense.

When we stop, the voices stop and I open my eyes. In front of me stands a projection of what seems to be the visual noise from a television set. It’s light shines across the dimly-lit, almost dark room and onto the faces of the 6 or so “dream sprites,” as I will call them. I think there were six, but I was too busy experiencing the Snow Fridge to stop and count or make a mental note of how many sprites were surrounding me at any given time.

The sprites were dressed all in silver. They went around in a circle saying “Hello, Briana,” as if to introduce themselves, or make it clear that each and every one was acknowledging your existence, and was glad about it.

12 (or so) eyes looking right at you for an extended period of time can be very intimidating, but there was something very warm and loving about it. That’s when the sprites began. Prior to this experience, we had been asked to fill out a short questionnaire. “What do you want to change?” “What is it now?” “What was it before?” “What do you want it to be?” Anyone who engages regularly in immersive theatre will tell you that it is often a very personal experience. So while I’m not going to tell you exactly how I answered that questionnaire, I will say that it involved money vs. time.

For about the next 15 minutes, the sprites and I explored the values of “enough”—is it time? Is it money? What is it? We made a time machine to go back in time and see the relationship between them. We used it again to go forward in time to see what the future might hold. What we discovered is that the inhabitants of the future are many, yet few. They are almost infinite, yet they vanish before you have a chance to really capture them, so it’s important to really appreciate them. And so, I met the seconds. “One second. One second. One second.” We wondered what we could do in that second, before it was gone. What was really important, in that second. They asked me to decide what I wanted to focus on in that current second. Just as they asked, one of the sprites announced that the snow had changed.

That was when it hit me—the snow wasn’t the frozen water that falls from the sky, it was more like the static between the channels on the television. The sounds in-between the stations on the radio. The noise that blurs our train of thought, yet opens us up to what might be just out of reach of our recognition. So I requested that we focus on the snow. My spritely guides then began a snow fight, and made snow angels. We broke down the laws of waking behavior and dreamt. Until, that is, it was time to wake up. Throughout the experience, a hooded figure sat in the corner. It was at this point that something we had done caught his attention and he made his way over. The sprites parted for him as he showed me a slip of paper with what I had written in the questionnaire and a tiny box with a snowflake inside. In my ear, he read the slip of paper to me, before he helped me stand up off the floor and walked me to the door.

With my tiny paper box in hand, I walked back up through the old, yet well-maintained stairs and back into the old, historic restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. But now, I had a new focus. Perhaps it isn’t about the relationship between time and money, but rather the relationship between us and time.

Snow Fridge continues through June 23 with limited tickets remaining. See all of our Hollywood Fringe Festival 2018 coverage here.

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