Frida...A Self Portrait, Shakespeare Theatre Company

The artist Frida Kahlo lived in the shadow of her artist husband Diego Rivera for a significant portion of her life but has been highly mythologized since her death.  Her life and her art has inspired many writers, visual artists, and performing artists. In Frida…A Self Portrait, writer and performer Vanessa Severo imagines Frida at the end of her life, reflecting on the past and sharing her views in the present. 

The piece is one that Severo has been performing and developing for over a decade, and it shows. Over the course of a tight 75 minutes, Severo moves seamlessly among characters in Frida’s life as well as seamlessly between Frida’s narrative and her own story. The result is a piece that is highly polished and also clearly evolving. Severo speaks candidly about including stories and elements in the play that were not there two years ago, but have been integrated into the play as she grows and evolves herself. Severo captures Frida’s passionate, wry, and challenging personality both through the sharp dialogue she has penned and expressive movement as Frida and as the other characters in Frida’s life. 

Severo is supported by a creative team that has collaborated well with her and each other. Joanie Schultz’s direction brings out not only the passion of both the artist and the performer, but also makes beautiful use of Severo’s talent for exquisite stage movement; together, director and performer create multiple deep and effective pieces of choreography that bring to life Kahlo’s struggles and deep emotional pain. These moments are highlighted by Rachael Cady’s lighting design, by turns painting the stage with broad strokes and creating moments of intense personal intimacy and introspection. 

Special mention must go to Jacqueline Penrod’s set and Katherine Davis’ costumes, which work together to create the world of Frida Kahlo. The stage is dominated by what appears to be a conceptual interpretation of a four poster bed—the frame high overhead of the stage, and four broken pillars in the corners of the playing area. The bed frame defines the playing area much as the confines of her bed defined the scope Frida’s life in her final days. Strung across the stage are several clotheslines hung with clothing that function at different times as costumes for Severo, props, and representations of characters in Frida’s life.  In one of the most effective uses of costume as character, Severo as Frida slides her arm into one of the sleeves of the suit representing Frida’s husband Diego Rivera, and suddenly the costume becomes Rivera himself, holding, caressing, and comforting Frida after a tragedy. 

Severo has taken disparate bits of Frida’s life and woven them together into a deeply personal narrative that reflects not only her subject’s journey as a woman and an artist, but also her own journey as a woman and an artist, and her own deep relationship with Frida Kahlo. As she does so, she relies on the audience to be already knowledgeable about Frida Kahlo’s life and also to be willing to overlook the times she elides some of the facts of Frida Kahlo’s life. At one point in the play, Severo’s Frida dances a tango with different dresses and men’s shirts, alluding to the affairs Frida had with both men and women; while this is fairly well known among people who know about Frida Kahlo, someone without that advance knowledge might not have picked up on it.

In any biographical play, the theatre maker has to make decisions about what to include and what to leave out.  In this Frida…A Self Portrait, Severo is exploring Frida’s fearlessness and authenticity through many challenges as well as her own connection to Frida as an artist and as a woman with her own challenges. That means that large swaths of Frida’s life and many of the nuances of her relationships with others didn’t make the cut. It is understandable why this singular focus meant that there was no room for Frida’s interests in politics, but I found myself wishing there was a deeper dive into her art. While Frida’s life was steeped in trauma, pain, and emotional devastation, the focus on this sometimes crowded out other facets of Frida Kahlo and her life. 

Having said that, Frida…A Self Portrait is an absorbing experience that not only examines the life of a unique and compelling artist but also examines what it is to be an artist and a human.