The Box Show

Dominique Salerno thinks outside the box while performing inside one. In her intensely creative collective of vignettes, The Box Show, she crams herself into a cupboard-like cube for 90 minutes, and like a magician pulling rainbow-colored strings from her mouth, she keeps surprising you with what she can produce in the space. One sequence is set inside the Trojan horse at the gates of Troy; Achilles has cold feet, and Odysseus and his motley crew—all portrayed by Salerno—must give him a pep talk. In another, Salerno puts jeans and shoes on her arms, then plays out a West Side Story–style dance-floor courtship between her arm-legs and her leg-legs. Other highlights find Salerno portraying a fetus and a self-deprecating Frida Kahlo. It’s often hilarious, but what makes the show most memorable are its moments of darkness, expressed in fleeting, poignant side thoughts and comments. This interplay between light and dark helps The Box Show achieve what every vignette show wants: It is even greater than the sum of its parts.—Gabe Cohn