Iced feet and some Frost - Robert that is

French puppeteer and American poet - It must be Fringe time

(Quick note: I’m ping-ponging this week between two of my favorite topics, arts and crime/courts. For those longing for a little more crime in the stew, look tomorrow for a rare weekend posting, with discussion of the notorious “Double Initial” murders.)

Occasionally there is a description of a Fringe Festival program that makes you go “hmm.”

Or “huh?”

“Traces,” a free performance at the Spiegelgarden Saturday, is just such a program. And it is also a program I’m intent upon seeing because, as I’ve learned through the years, the shows that sound the most mysterious can also be the most moving.

I am reminded of the recent “Monuments” performance at Fringe, and the appearance of massive faces, drifting almost like apparitions, upon a copse of downtown trees. You can find my past coverage of “Monuments” here: “Watch trees morph into the towering faces of Rochester's unsung heroes at Fringe Festival”

Here is a nutshell description of “Traces”: Local people are the core of the show, and they tell the program creators of their lives as the participants have the shapes of their feet being replicated within a silicon molding. Those moldings are then transferred and transformed into ice sculptures, with a written tidbit about the participant’s life and thoughts inside.

The participants - in essence the cast - will be part of a choreographed program within the Spiegelgarden (they’ve spent the week rehearsing). The feet, placed throughout, gradually melt away with the revelations appearing inside.

An earlier performance of “Traces”

Even as I type this, I admit I am still very unsure what to expect.

French ice puppeteer

The creator of the show is French ice puppeteer Elise Vigneron. An ice puppeteer is just as it sounds, one who manufactures puppets from ice. And the manipulation and movement of a puppet crafted from ice is just as difficult as it sounds.

For Vigneron, with whom I spoke Thursday at the Spiegelgarden, the ice becomes the ephemeral nature of life, hourly or daily, or life as a whole. Within her performances, utilizing puppets, the audience witnesses the slow vanishing of characters throughout.

“You feel it disappear,” she said.

Elise Vigneron Thursday within the freezer where the iced feet sculptures temporarily reside.

Erica Fee, the producer and executive director of the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival, was herself uncertain just what to expect with Vigneron’s work, and there is little in the arts world that Fee has not witnessed.

“The first time I heard about it I thought this was totally wild and weird but then I attended a performance by (Vigneron’s company) Théâtre de L’Entrouvert in New York,” Fee said.

That show, “Oedipus,” convinced Fee that she needed Vigneron at Fringe.

“She typically deals in ice marionettes and ice puppetry, which is not for the faint of heart, especially for the actors who work with it because they are now holding ice for an entire show,” Fee said.

In an interview with Villa Albertine, Vigneron spoke of “Oedipus” and her art in general: “Nowadays, in a world where we face our own vulnerability, this material, the ice, puts us in the cyclic time of transformation.

“The substance and its characteristics immediately provoke empathy from the audience; it connects us with our own substance as well as the world we inhabit. It speaks directly of our ever changing world.”

Vigneron sees the iced foot art - I still struggle with how to describe this - as much like footprints in sand, a temporary if not fleeting reminder of existence. The message is not so much a story of mortality but more so one of nature, she said, and an expression of our place in that world.

There is a fragility and vulnerability to life and we as the world’s inhabitants, Vigneron said. Ice, for her, captures that nature.

“Traces” is at 4 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, at the downtown Spiegelgarden. The show does not require tickets. More info here: “Traces”

Becoming Robert Frost

My wife, Charlotte, and I visited the Jewish Community Center Thursday evening for “In His Own Words: An Evening With Robert Frost.”

Peter Saracino as Robert Frost.

Peter Saracino, who has performed in community theater throughout the Finger Lakes region, inhabits Frost in a one-man 70-minute show that seamlessly meshes Frost’s life, one occasionally darkened by pain and loss, and the poetry of the four-time Pulitzer winner.

There is a gentle folksiness with Saracino’s performance that provides a symmetry in spirit with Frost’s words. That said, Frost’s poems have sometimes been discounted as simple musings on nature, a conclusion that misses a deeper resonance.

“While many think of his poems as simply being nature poems, the natural world was most often used simply as the context within which to talk about people and their relationships,” Saracino said of Frost in a 2023 interview with the Finger Lakes Times.

A sample of Saracino’s performance can be found here: Peter Saracino as Robert Frost

The show will be back at JCC Saturday, Sept. 13, at 2 p.m. If you have a choice of two roads, this is a choice well taken.