{"id":115922,"date":"2025-07-11T14:46:30","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T18:46:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=115922"},"modified":"2025-07-12T10:50:33","modified_gmt":"2025-07-12T14:50:33","slug":"scrutiny-toronto-fringe-2025-three-shows-explore-means-reborn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2025\/07\/11\/scrutiny-toronto-fringe-2025-three-shows-explore-means-reborn\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Toronto Fringe 2025: Three Shows Explore What It Means To Be Reborn"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Nina
Nina Maria in Reborn at the Toronto Fringe (Photo courtesy of the artist)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In three standout productions at this years Toronto Fringe Festival, the concept of rebirth \u2014 both personal and artistic \u2014 took centre stage. Whether that was through an investigation of the effects of artificial intelligence on our daily lives to a troubled legacy of an institutional theatre, these shows ask what it means to be born again, and, in the process, what it means to be alive.<\/p>\n

Through music, dance and inventive forms, Reborn, Iris (says goodbye) and String of Pearls mine the possibilities and pitfalls of doubling, re-incarnation and possible resurrection.<\/p>\n

What emerges from investigating these three shows is not a prescription for change, but a variety of portraits of transformation \u2014 by choice, by accident, and oftentimes, by force.<\/p>\n

REBORN<\/h3>\n

Two Minds Productions\/Creator: Nina Maria<\/strong><\/em>
\nTheatre Passes Muraille Mainspace<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In the pre-recorded announcement that plays before Reborn, a 60-minute musical written by, co-composed and starring Nina Maria<\/strong>, we are informed that the show we are about to see is a work-in-progress and there are parts of it that are still raw and evolving, just like this amorphous world we live in.<\/p>\n

Reborn is about a film actress named Cynthia Faux (Maria), who, in the process of filming a movie, signs away her identity to her production company, who can use her likeness for future AI replication, a decision that, along with her own inquiry about identity and womanhood, poetically bedevils her.<\/p>\n

Directed by Percy Mullally,<\/strong> with fine lighting design by Danielle Carey<\/strong>, Maria commands the stage in a bewitching black dress and regal shoulder-length carmine gloves. In her aphoristic interior monologues, she delivers her lines with elan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system does not want a heartbeat. They want a metronome.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a handful of moody songs (notably \u201cA Crash in the System\u201d), all of which carry the influence of the grand, operatic style of Lady Gaga (co-composed by Mike Kondakow<\/strong>) Maria is utterly rapturous.<\/p>\n

I began to wonder how to describe Maria, a performer I was not previously familiar with, and in a satirical video segment later on in the show, an interview on \u201cThe Drew Perrymore Show\u201d, the creators beat me to the chase by describing her as \u201cmagnetic,\u201d \u201celegantly composed,\u201d and \u201clike an old movie star.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maria is the perfect medium to investigate the power of the second skin technology affords us, and the existential price we pay in that exchange.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s truth in the blur,\u201d one character ironically says \u2014 the same goes for this show too.<\/p>\n

Rather than hide behind the tried and true (and frankly tiring) scaffold of a narrative, Reborn is a breezy, refreshing staging of pressing ideas about the future, and a showcase for an irreplaceable artist that should be on everyone\u2019s radar.<\/p>\n