During moments of intense stress, it is said that life passes before one’s eyes. In my case, this happened when I was sitting on a table in front of a UNM class—trying to look cool—when I realized that two table legs were collapsing and I was sliding toward the floor. In Leslie Ayvazian’s “High Dive,” playing at the Vortex, audiences have a chance to watch someone else’s life pass by.

The playwright/narrator, three weeks away from her fiftieth birthday, finds herself on a Greek hotel diving board encouraged by family members to overcome her acrophobia and to drop twelve feet to the pool below.  Vacations are not among Leslie’s favorite things. Hesitating on the diving board, she recalls her honeymoon in Hawai’i when the earth moved—because of a hurricane. And a frigid Florida trip when waves propelled frozen fish on shore. And an earthquake in Mexico. Yet she keeps embracing adventure, “because I imagine that I am, perhaps without my knowing it, a person who would like to do that.” She doesn’t.  Armenian-American Leslie Ayvazian wrote and performed “High Dive” in 2001. Before the show she recruited audience members to read bits of dialogue during the performance, explaining that, “I have always wanted to do a one-person show with a large cast.”

At the Vortex Leslee (different spelling) Richards plays the accident-prone tourist under the direction of Tish Miller. Script pages are again passed out to attendees, but this production also uses actors in the audience to read some parts. Diana Dorland speaks for the mother-in-law, Drew Pollock for the adventurous husband, and Harry Zimmerman for the increasingly obnoxious eleven-year-old son. In the performance I saw, not a cue was missed.  Richards relates Ayvazian’s retrospective with charming ease. With her short, curly auburn hair (the same color as the playwright’s) and light sprinkling of freckles, Richards is immediately accessible and likeable. The stories she tells of her blind date/motorcycle wreck, her work at VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), her stints installing cable TV, working props and costumes at a dinner theater, and appearing on “$25,000 Pyramid” are all warm and funny.

This hour of theater is not profound, but it is enjoyable. It gives a new meaning to the expression “look before you leap.”

If You Go 

WHAT: “High Dive” by Leslie Ayvazian 

WHEN: Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m. through August 5 

WHERE: The Vortex Theatre, 2004½ Central, SE

HOW MUCH: $12. Reservations 247-8600

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