Orbiter 3's 'A Knee That Can Bend'

Anna Zaida Szapiro plays college student Kate, who travels to Senegal to study how lesbians live there. Awkward and nerdy, she plunges in without a plan, “scholarly observing” women play basketball and hoping her gaydar works.

“Immersion in a foreign country,” she observes, “is like being a toddler again.”

She connects with Aicha (Jennifer Kidwell) and her sister NéNé (Candace C. Moore). Aicha flirts aggressively while Kate ponders academic ethics. She can’t sleep with a study subject, of course — but when heart and mind conflict, guess which wins?

Real love

Their love story is as romantic as any I’ve seen on stage, and as realistic — meaning that it quickly becomes complicated. There is no word for lesbian in any Senegalese language, Kate learns; Aicha lives with the constant challenge of hiding in plain sight in a culture that rejects and persecutes gays who are out. NéNé, however, is more conflicted — “It takes too much effort to keep it up forever,” she complains, seeing her feelings for women as something she needs to grow out of.

Kate presses on with her relationship and her study, but her thesis is alien to them. “I’m just trying to show that people like you and me exist everywhere,” she argues, pointing to America’s relative tolerance and freedom. Aicha doesn’t want to condemn her own culture, and NéNé resists any attempt to define her as a lesbian.

A unified production

Director Kittson O’Neill’s superb production plays along Studio X’s long wall, creating a shallow playing space and keeping the audience to four close rows. Though not ideal for basketball, Colin McIlvaine’s colorful set of platforms backed by mud-red walls suggests the play’s many locales and embraces the action well. Maria Shaplin’s lighting is hot yet gentle, and Nick Kourtides’s African drums and club music help define scenes as well.

Jillian Keys’s costumes allow Danielle Leneé — who plays multiple distinctive roles and provides much of the play’s humor — the quick changes she needs. I wanted to peek at the program to make sure she wasn’t two wonderful actresses, but Orbiter 3 is committed to virtual programs (which can’t be read during the show, of course).

Most moving are Szapiro and Kidwell’s sincere performances, which provide full access to these complicated characters and their difficult relationship. As she did in the title role of the Wilma’s Antigone and the Fringe hit The Underground Railroad Game, Kidwell presents a tough exterior from her Mohawk on down, but an open, vulnerable soul. Szapiro graced Azuka’s Tigers Be Still and the Fringe smash 901 Nowhere Street with a similar instinct for wry humor and a shy charm that’s impossible not to like.

Together, they’re a couple fit for the incisive intimacy of Goidel’s script, in a production that’s simply lovely. I can’t wait to see Goidel’s Local Girls, which Azuka will premiere in February, starring Szapiro.