Rochester Fringe Festival 2025
Low Down
Written and performed by Binaifer Dabu, storyteller and lifelong performer, whose journey spans India, Boston, and Upstate N.Y., Fires celebrates stories rooted in personal experience.
Review
Rochester Fringe is lucky to be the first audience for Fires, a new work written, directed, and performed by Binaifer Dabu. Fires is an exceptional working draft of an introspective and explorative one-woman show filled with fervor and an energetic performance that’s contagious. Binaifer Dabu transports the audience into an immersive tapestry of intimate memories that are funny, sad, and incredibly moving.
This story grapples with cultural identity and what it is like to be a young woman raised in India. She references “the burden of a girl child in families who pray for a son.” We begin in a classroom, where Dabu is asked to draw a family tree, and while most thought to draw their fathers, uncles, brothers, and men in their families, she chose to draw her mother, which was a choice scolded by her teacher.
We follow our narrator over the course of several years, starting from being a young child until the age of nineteen, when she was arranged to be married and moved to New York. Dabu asks, “How do I carry my country in a suitcase?” The piece acknowledges her family lineage of performers, the abuse she faced from men within her own community, and the implication for women to remain silent.
The audience is introduced to an array of characters. She plays herself, a grandfather, a mother, a grandmother, a tea vendor, a little girl who is considered untouchable, and more. The images and sensory details are vivid. We are transported to a train station, a beauty pageant, her grandparents’ well, and other stops along her journey to adulthood. The exceptional control of Dabu’s voice, the sound, intentional movement and mask work, the use of repetition, and the idiosyncrasies prove that she is a true performer at heart.
After the show, audience members stuck around to express their praise for the show and interact with the performer. Dabu encouraged audiences to provide verbal and written feedback to continue the development of the work. Our audience was fortunate to be one of the first to experience this inspiring performance. Fires is a must-see from Rochester Fringe.
