There are a series of questions to the audience – Who here has a father? Who here hates their father? – not rhetorical inquiries, but ones you hold your hand up to answer.
Volunteers are also sought for a ritual at one point. Because of all the direct dialog with the audience, the houselights are always kind of up..
“Nosebleed” has a workshop feel to it; the actors jump in to recreate specific scenes as if improvising. There is a looseness involved and some time taken up for the audience to do their homework.
A recurring bit about a particular scene from a forgotten season of “The Bachelorette” doesn’t quite land – it was apparently included to show one suitor’s unresolved daddy issues: “Did you ever tell him he wasn’t there for you?”
The talented ensemble is largely the same one that performed at Lincoln Center – Ashil Lee, Kaili Y. Turner, Saori Tsukada, Drae Campbell – all rocking white shirts and nonbinary exuberance like the author (the one exception is the actor playing the thankless role of White Guy, played in appropriately annoying fashion in D.C. by Cody Nickell).
Individual results will vary, as they say. But the exercise of writing unanswered questions to a dead parents adds a deeper connection to the presented drama, almost approaching participatory performance art. It’s one thing to relate to a situation on stage; quite another to pause and jot down deep questions about it. At the least, it makes for a cheaper yet far more entertaining substitution for therapy.
“The Nosebleed” runs through April 23 at Woolly Mammoth, Washington, DC.