A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew with ‘Fire Season’ (Review)

When I was 16, my family and I went to go to the movies, but the theater had closed that night because of smoke from a nearby fire. Instead we drove along the 118 freeway near Porter Ranch, to see what was happening, fascinated by the orange glow coming up over the then-unoccupied hills. It’s the first time I really remember fires being a thing in Southern California. It certainly wouldn’t be the last time. Because if you live in the Los Angeles area long enough, you can trace the years by the fires. There was the year where Cal State Northridge canceled classes because of the smoke; the one with a lot of ash everywhere; the one where the Sepulveda Pass burned and I could see and smell it on my commute for weeks after. They’ve only become more and more frequent: the periodic fires have become a fire season.

Which brings us to Capital W’s haunting, yet hopeful Fire Season. The show is a look at climate change and humanity’s relationship with the Earth, filtered through the lens of California’s annual devastations. Capital W invites participants to wander around Paramount Ranch while listening to what is, essentially, a radio show of essays written and performed by Monica Miklas, Capital W’s longtime producer (and now writer).

It’s also an in-person show, which means we need to discuss the other ongoing crisis. Capital W has taken every precaution they can including a waiver, temperature check, equipment sanitization (they offer headphones, but you’re free to bring your own), and requiring masks, along with the show being outdoors. As with anything right now, the risk level isn’t zero, but I felt as safe as I possibly could given the circumstances.

The in-person setting here is important because Paramount Ranch, like so much of Southern California, was affected by the 2018 Woolsey Fire which burned nearly 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It lends Fire Season a certain weight because you can see and feel the effects of those fires. The ash might not still be in the air, but the feeling hangs over the place.

Miklas’ essays work in tandem with the location and serve to highlight the weirdness, beauty, and existential terror of living in a place regularly ravaged by the effects of climate change. They’re elegiac, they’re angry, they’re so many more emotions as Miklas grapples with everything and gives voice to something I know I’ve felt, and I suspect many of my generation and surrounding generations have felt as well.

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And she quite literally gives voice to these essays in Fire Season as she reads them live over the course of the show. This event easily could have been envisioned as a podcast or a recording that you took with you into Paramount Ranch and listened to on your own time, but it is actually a piece of live theatre. When you check in, you’re given an FM receiver and Miklas broadcasts the whole time with some elements that frame it as a “radio” show.

In a time when it’s nearly impossible to have live theatre in a meaningful way, Capital W has found a way.

It makes it a true performance, and Miklas keeps each reading interesting, often lending a sense of spoken word poetry to the experience. This choice helps it feel immersive because it grants that connection so prevalent in the format — it feels like a private performance, even when you know that it’s not.

(A brief interlude for another fire story and a recommendation: The Old Place is just a few miles from Paramount Ranch. It’s one of those true LA gems, tucked away in the canyons, renovated from an old post office building. The restaurant has a distinctly Western vibe and is best known for their oak-grilled steaks, but all of the food is great. And, somehow, miraculously it avoided being burned down in the Woolsey Fire and for a while you could only get to it by taking the long way around past Paramount Ranch, because the normal access point is a bridge a few hundred yards away that melted during the fire. They’re open for takeout right now and it’s a lovely way to make a night out of the trek out to the area. And, now, back to your regularly scheduled review….)

Near the end, Miklas calls attendees back to her in a socially distant circle. She still speaks over the radio and her face is covered by a mask, but it gives her final essay some extra oomph. For me, it was the most impactful of them and brought everything together with a message of hard-earned hope: despite the wreckage and destruction, you can still start on the work of putting it back together. Capital W takes an extra step here and provides a zine with information about the area, transcriptions of Miklas’ essays, and, vitally, action items with steps you can take right now to help avert even greater disasters.

Fire Season runs through October 25. Tickets are $45.

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