Holland Reid
When I first heard that actor/writer/photographer Becca McCoy was planning to turn her book, The Year of Extraordinary Travel, into a solo theater piece, I wondered how it would work. The book, published in 2021 by St. Petersburg Press, traces the odysseys she embarked upon from September 2018 to August 2019 following the end of her marriage and the sale of her house. I loved the book, but couldn’t quite envision how she could compress a 138-page account of travels to eight U.S. states and seven countries, experiences with five different travel companions (including her young daughter), and 10,500 photos into a 75-minute show.
Turns out she made it work just fine. In collaboration with director Vickie Daignault, McCoy has created an enthralling, suspenseful, often hilarious, and ultimately profound piece of theater. After seeing The Year of Extraordinary Travel, which runs through Dec. 18 at Studio Grand Central, you may want to do like Becca and jump on the next plane.
McCoy’s charisma, wit and serious vocal chops are well-known; she’s won applause and acting awards in Tampa Bay and in regional theater in shows like Mamma Mia! and Gypsy. Daignault is an accomplished actor as well as director (and a Gulfport resident), and gave an award-winning solo performance as Joan Didion in Stageworks’ The Year of Magical Thinking. Both are keen to the demands of theatrical story-telling, of keeping an audience engaged through rhythm, flow and the occasional surprise.
McCoy upends expectations right away. After jokingly warning that she’s going to show us all 10,000+ of her photos, she sits down on a couch and begins to read from her book as photos appear on the screen behind her… and then leaps up in a burst of exuberance, unable to contain her joy at talking to us.
The show continues in this vein as McCoy shares her stories from readings and from memory. The photos add another dimension, with each journey introduced on screen by a litany of facts, including places visited, miles traveled, and means of transport (including schooner and tuktuk).
Becca McCoy
And what stories she has to tell! In Alaska, she stayed at the Borealis Base Camp and swooned at the Northern Lights. In NYC, she wound up sleeping on the couch of a Very Famous Person. In Thailand, she met a blind elephant in mourning, and in France, New Zealand and other locales she managed the task of traveling with her simultaneously “unbreakable and delicate” 11-year-old.
A love affair evolved over the course of these journeys (she now lives with her partner in Atlanta), and she continued to act in shows around the country. Then, after “self-actualizing all over the globe for 12 months,” the pandemic hit, and she found herself suspended between “the no longer and the not yet.” Fortunately for us, that gave her the time to turn her extraordinary travel into an extraordinary work of art.
The Year of Extraordinary Travel Studio Grand Central, 2260 1st Ave. S., St. Petersburg. Through Dec. 18: Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. studiograndcentral.com.
Photos from Becca McCoy’s travels are now on view at the Studio Grand Central gallery, where they pop much more dramatically than on screen. Her book is on sale there as well.
