Among its many genres, the New York International Fringe Festival has showcased enough personal stories to represent the change in politics, society and attitudes that have taken place throughout its sturdy 19-years-and-counting run. Amid this year's 16 day festival of nearly 200 shows and a grand total of 1,100 performances, Julie Novak's America's Next Top, co-written and directed by Novak's wife Eva Tenuto and performed at East Village's Under St Marks, tells a highly personal story that addresses attitudes to sexuality and gender identification past and present.
Novak is all woman. One glance at her in her underwear, a discernible underpinning (albeit with little to pin) of her autobiographical one woman show, is affirmation of this. But the frequency of society's confusion to her otherwise androgynous appearance in innocuous habitats such as the supermarket, where the “Sir, Ma'am, Sir…?” reception of strangers have bookmarked her day to day existence, is to Novak, a combination of tedium and amusement.
Novak's childhood comfort blanket was her trusty toolbox; the elated discovery of her physical maturity came at the age of fourteen when admiring her snug-fit McDonald's uniform in the mirror. Through cleverly descending snapshots of her past, we witness a feminine looking teenager and little girl, who nevertheless identified her sexuality and traditionally boys' own playtime pursuits from the get-go, long before hosting an imaginary DIY TV show in the safe confines of her bedroom.
Using comedic skills honed in stand-up and improvisational comedy, Novak playfully addresses her androgyny with songs (her Cher rendition name-checks the well-documented Chaz Bono journey), dance and comic sketches, which throughout highlight the Escher stair painting variables of gender and sexual identification. As for the actual highlights, they include a fantasy episode where an adolescent Novak is confronted by the game show-style prize of lesbianism with a winner's starter kit: dungarees, plaid shirt, etc. Elsewhere, she mocks her early adulthood singer/songwriter musical quest for self-expression with an acoustic guitar rendition of angst ridden clichés and maudlin minor chords.
America's Next Top never lingers on sadness for too long. The production relies on Novak's dexterity to keep the show moving and changing with minimal need for decorative staging and effects. The more intimate moments occur when she addresses the audience in – underwear aside – stripped-down mode, confessing in a conversational style, the difficulties in coming out and staying out. Truth will out, and here it does just that. Consequently, Novak is as comfortable in her skin as she is in her dungarees or for that matter, her underwear.
