Flashout, Alexis Soloskli (Review by Lara Ferguson)

College is where you find your freedom, right? Allison is a sheltered young woman, away from home for the first time and attending college in New York City. She is determined to find her freedom, from the constraints of her parents and their expectations. When she is invited to attend the improvisational performance of a well-known fringe theatre troupe, known to involve the audience in their avant-garde offerings, she jumps at the chance to participate and over the next months becomes fully immersed in their lives and work, finding a freedom that is in turns exhilarating and terrifying. A freedom that ends in the death of a friend and an unplanned secret return home. Many years later, when someone from her past life begins reaching out to her electronically, Allison, who is now leading a very different life, is forced to revisit a past that could threaten her current existence, one that she thought was securely behind her. As she explores the origins of these messages, she is forced to reevaluate her earlier experiences through a more mature lens. Set in the early 1970’s, Flashout, is a deep dive into the avant-garde arts scene, the good, the bad, the drugs, the sex, the hardship, and the creativity. It is an honest examination of the human desire for freedom and how what seems like freedom may not actually be on the other side of experience.