Interview: Siena Foster-Soltis And Rory James Leech of CONTRITION PAGEANT at Misfit Toys Collective

In chatting with writer and director Siena Foster-Soltis about Contrition Pageant, her upcoming collaboration with the Misfit Toys Collective, it is hard to exactly box the show into a genre. The seeds of this show were planted, she recalls, partially in response to an earlier performance about “fallacious senses of intimacy with an audience” in which she and her collaborator “vomited confessions” at an audience in front of paintings. In diagnosing her response to that performance and reflecting on her Catholic and Jewish heritage, she was able to unearth the root of her uneasiness with the piece. “We had confessed, but had we been absolved?” The question lead to extensive academic and philosophical research into the intersections of disgust, forgiveness, and phenomenology. Thus, somewhere from the analyses of Rimbaud and Bataille, a “maximalist, full force, burlesque-inspired” performance “with the allure of a ritual but more devastatingly confrontational” and containing “immersive elements that straddle the worlds of cabaret and performance art” and an original score played by a 10 piece brass band was birthed.

The Catholic ritual of confession, Foster-Soltis feels, is already fecund with dark secrecy and theatrical potential, and it is not a far leap to begin exploring ideas of “shame versus guilt, grace versus forgiveness” and to question what authentic forgiveness or authentic contrition even look like. “There are lots of silly philosophy jokes,” she promises of the final product of this exploration, “but really we’re just talking about life.” She urges audiences to “come ready for a collective experience, and come ready for a communal experience. (The show is) based on and formed around the macro ideas of shame and exoneration, but (is) also about the idea of the self breaking apart to collectivism.”

Misfit Toys Collective’s artistic director, Rory James Leech is excited to be producing the third collaboration between the collective and Foster-Soltis after the acclaimed The Acts of Afra, which sold-out Non Plus Ultra in August 2022, and FAUST, which premiered in January 2023.. He extolls, “This is our most ambitious collaboration yet, but also the truest to Misfit Toys Collective’s mission. Seeing Siena’s work is so in line with our goal of challenging specific ideas of Gen Z’s wanderlust and ideology.” Leech feels hopeful that investments in challenging, genre-defying works like Contrition Pageant can help us resist an overarching cultural demand for our entertainment to be entirely on-demand. “We want the show to be accessible, we want to bring in audiences who will continue engaging with our work,” and he even hopes “audiences who have only engaged with more conventional theatre” will give something so “intimate, vulnerable, and immediate” a chance.

Tickets for the one-night-only performance at the Elysian Theatre are already sold out, but a standby cue will be held at the door starting 30 minutes before the performance.