10 Days Takes You All the Way

Market Maven Donna Rae Davidson’s Latest Production, a Comedic Musical About the Wonders of Vipassana, Takes the Audience on a Full Circle Journey

BY MEGAN LEE

Anyone who knows this creative powerhouse, musical mama and outwardly cynical chic smelled something amiss when she began talking about the retreat she was planning, last Fall.

That she’d signed up for a retreat rooted in ten days of “noble silence” and meditation sounded like more than an adventure, even if she heard the (vegetarian) food was good. No reading, no writing, no music, no eye-contact. . . no, no, no.

But, like any adversity the best thing to do is to write about it, to make sense of it, and to evaluate it, and to make it funny?

Davidson does all is as she takes her full audiences on a painfully funny, 90 minute pilgrimage in “10 Days To Happiness: One Woman’s Hilariously Tortured Search for Enlightenment.” The production begins with ‘Day One,’ guided by gongs, coming to the realization she’s thrust herself into a prison term of ten and a half hours, a day, of silent meditation, rooted in Vipassanā.

She autobiographically bounces between pissed-off and peaceful in this one woman show, accompanied by a cleverly shadowing supporting cast of three, as she counts down the days. She tongue-in-cheeky explains her internal quandaries and struggles, such as contemplating stealing a pen from the water cup labeling table, as she counts down the days. She talks about the nicknames for people who stand out in her mind. She sees her influ­ences, and misses her life. Her life which she previously questioned, landing her in this predicament.

She signed a contract to be peaceful, and though wrestling with it violently, she pulls through. We watch how by Day 8 the immersion becomes less painful and she begins to see the light, at the end of the tunnel. Her audio visual aids, including many notable Market personalities and details, add immensely to the produc­tion, pulling the audience through as she pulls herself along by her crazy panties, even posting them up on the clothes-line and daring others to read them.

10 Days to Day to Happiness, continues, Friday and Saturday Nights, at 8 pm, and the Amazing Grace Spiritual Center, in sunny Ballard, through March 15. Unless it is extended. We recommend it to one and all, even a fisher­man could get a laugh on this one! For more information and/or to buy tickets find the website or go to brownpa­pertickets.org.

A theater group in New York has contacted her about using the script, which is all the more reason to see it here first. Davidson is also known for her many musicals from “The North Arcade” to “Claudia Kelly’s 500 Hats.”