Dragon Mama at Williamstown Theatre Festival
Sara Porkalob in Solo Performance
By: Charles Giuliano - Jul 10, 2024
“Dragon Mama,” a one-woman show by Sara Porkalob, is but one of three staged productions in this season of the venerable Williamstown Theatre Festival. With a brief run it is presented on the black box Center Stage. It has been used by WTF only once previously.
The highly regarded WTF was ravaged by Covid and the mismanagement of former artistic director Mandy Greenfield. Currently, the festival is in a state of transition and change with bright hopes for the future.
The intimate stage, used primarily by the college’s theatre department, proved to be an ideal setting for a performance in which the Seattle-based performer of Filipino heritage, reached out to the audience engaging our hearts and souls.
The two hour production, with an intermission, is one of three works comprising a trilogy. “Dragon Lady,” which premiered in Seattle in 2017, is about her grandmother; “Dragon Mama,” produced two years later in Boston for American Repertory Theatre, covers the teen and young-adult years of Sara’s mother, Maria, until Sara is a preschooler. Porkalob from childhood through college, is the subject of the in-development “Dragon Baby,” which will have a 10-member cast and band.
She told us that she opens at the Geffen Theatre in Los Angels in September. She is seeking a theatre to do the trilogy in repertory. There are also plans for television.
We experienced a compact woman with slicked back hair. The costume was street ware of faded tight jeans and a light jacket. She moved about the small stage with cat-like precision.
Her forté is a masterful ability to morph through numerous vignettes of family members including the formidable matriarch as well as siblings of various ages. It’s daunting to keep up with all the lightning-fast changes. While feeling lost and overwhelmed in the long first act there was the sense of being in the presence of an awesomely talented and expressive artist. It was challenging to follow all of the threads that wove into a complex family tapestry.
The confusion settled down in the more palatable second act. Leaving a child (Sara Lee as in the cake) and family behind when she boards a plane for Alaska. Working on a fishing boat she plans to send money home and find herself.
A gruff shipmate tips her off to Iditarod a lively, raucous gay bar. There she hooks up with what proves to be the love of her life. After plot twists and turns they move in together and send for Sara Lee.
There is a glorious and unexpected moment when she sings a Whitney Houston song during karaoke. The audience was astonished and thrilled by her pipes. Previously, she appeared on Broadway in the musical “1776.”
This production ends on Sunday, July 14.