Ariel Estrada’s play “Full Contact” features multiple coming-of-age tales: a child growing up in small-town Alaska after his father immigrates from the Philippines, a gay man at the peak of the AIDS crisis and a person who escapes from a martial arts cult after 20 years.
The twist is all of those tales involve the same main character — and Estrada plays not only that role in his production, but all of the characters on stage.
“Full Contact,” written as an evolving self-narrative during the past six years, is scheduled to make its official world debut as a stage production Friday at Perseverance Theatre. Estrada, during a break in rehearsals last Saturday at the theater, said the play’s central theme is more common to people than its uncommon central character might suggest.
“As our bodies become more and more constricted in this (societal) climate what does it mean to have a body in that sort when it’s under extreme duress, and you’re still trying to live your lives and live in that body?” he said. “I think that’s a question that everybody, regardless of their background, will enjoy — the answers that this particular person comes up with because it may illuminate how they look at their own evolution in their own ways of moving through the world and existing.”
Ariel Estrada engages in both sides of a one-sided conversation during a rehearsal of his one-man play “Full Contact” at Perseverance Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 30. (Mark Sabbatini / Juneau Empire)
Estrada, 55, said the name of the play is from the intense “personal story of my time as a martial artist for 20 years.” The narrative also is layered with narratives that come with his move from Sitka to the East Coast as a youth.
“During that time was also sort of my coming of age in New York City,” he said. “And so many things happened — 9/11 was sort of the end of the AIDS crisis for people. It became a manageable disease for people of a certain income and access. That’s the best way to describe it. And of course other things happened during that time other than just 9/11 — it was a pretty busy time in New York in terms of various disasters and things that happened.”
The narrative has become more realistic since work on it began in 2018, Estrada said. He said “I originally envisioned this play as being much more experimental” — with lots of movement, poetry and music — but it has evolved as a more blunt and straightforward presentation because “I wasn’t telling the entire truth of the story.”
Estrada has performed “Full Contact” in residency appearances at theaters and during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 he screened a film version via Zoom. That’s how Perseverance Theatre Artistic Director Leslie Ishii, who knew Estrada through an Asian-American theater consortium, learned about the play and became interested in bringing it to Juneau.
“He had kind of a Q-and-A afterwards and then we kept talking,” she said. Learning he came from Sitka led to the suggestion that including that in the narrative “would make it an Alaskan play.’”
Estrada said it ended up being among the many updates that make “Full Contact” quite different than the film version — and the ones performed in residencies two years ago.
“There is so much Alaska in the story that I couldn’t really tell the story without Alaska in it because my formative years here were so intense,” he said. “They were intense in terms of being in this very small town with this dreamer artist’s son, being sort of contained in the small town and the things that it made me want to do. Then doing theater and music and performing, and moving to New York and having sort of more bigger-town dreams. And then, a lot like a holiday rom-com, I returned back to my hometown.”
As his locations in life have changed, so have his worldviews as captured in the play’s narrative.
“The times that we’re living in now has made me be much more introspective about what does it mean to fight,” Estrada said. “What does it mean to think about the ongoing work for liberation, and continued and more and deeper freedom for everyone, especially those of marginalized identity? The rights of those who have been traditionally been left behind in this culture, what does it really mean to struggle in a way that is that doesn’t hurt ourselves, it doesn’t hurt other people, that instead brings the most healing to the world? Whereas when I was much younger I was much more about ‘Let’s burn it all down.’”
Also, while there’s plenty of movement on stage by necessity — since among other things Estrada literally has to take both sides in a conversation — the physical changes he’s gone through into his mid-50s are also reflected in the production.
“My body has aged, even over the past seven years, he said. “When I first started this play I could actually still do a lot of the martial arts that was in that (version) I originally did seven years ago. A lot can happen to a body as you age and I definitely can’t do that stuff anymore.”
But there doesn’t need to be fancy martial arts exhibits for Estrada to bring life to the stage, Ishii said.
“What’s really fortunate as a director is I’m working with an artist who’s well trained and has incredible skills,” she said. “So rather than just tell us, Ariel is showing us and he becomes multiple characters, as well as the movement, that progress the story. So it got really active and brought to life the various people in his life.”
The set, while fairly simple in furnishings and decor, also goes through its own evolution during the play, Estrada said.
“It looks like it’s some sort of like martial arts school, or some sort of yoga school, or anybody who does any sort of physical modality they’ll walk in and go like, ‘Oh, it looks like we’re about to go into a yoga class or a martial arts class, or some sort of meditation class, right?’” he said. “But then the place ends up morphing to a lot of different places…there’s also going to be screens on either side that things are going to be projected on that change the location that we’re at and support when I change characters, and sort of time travel through different periods of that 20 years.”
“Full Contact” was recently selected by the National New Play Network to receive what the organization calls a “Rolling World Premiere,” which “models a process for developing and producing new plays — one that centers development through production, incentivizes collaboration, and builds momentum for a play’s future life.” In essence that means the play will get a chance to evolve further with different directors and venues as Estrada brings it Leviathan Lab in New York City Diversionary Theatre in San Diego.
“I’m also just really excited to see how each theater reinterprets the play because it helps me as a playwright and a performer to be able to (say) ‘Oh, this is this particular director’s vision of it or this is that particular director’s vision of it.’”
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
Know and Go
What: One-man stage play “Full Contact”
Where: Perseverance Theatre
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays through Dec 21, 4 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 22.
Tickets: $30-$45. Dec. 8 and 12 performances are pay-as-you-can at the door.
Website: https://www.ptalaska.org.
