Fringe Review

Brianne Taylor’s “Keeper of the Plains” is a one-woman show that invites you into the slow rhythm of prairie life and the generations of women who’ve lived it. With stories that stretch from farm to city to motherhood and back again, she captures the texture of a life built from silence, sweat, and small joys.

There’s a meditative quality to the performance, like a guided vision quest rooted in the dirt of the Midwest. The sound design brings it all to life—cattle calls echoing across the plains, the sharp click of a gas stove lighting, the sizzle of breakfast in the early morning. She moves barefoot across the stage, grounding herself in the land she describes, her physicality quietly reinforcing the connection between story and soil.

Photos of the Tallgrass Prairie serve as a visual anchor throughout, pairing scenes of domestic ritual and personal reflection with sweeping views that feel both intimate and vast. For those who grew up in the Midwest, these images stir something deep. For those who didn’t, Taylor offers a way in.

The structure is a loosely connected series of vignettes, poetic without feeling abstract, and grounded without being too literal. It’s not a linear plot, but a patchwork of memory, each piece stitched together by sound, movement, and voice. Taylor’s object work and vocal shifts add subtle layers. Never flashy, but always intentional.

More than anything, this is a celebration of quiet strength. The strength to care, to endure, to carry lessons from the land and the women who shaped it. Brianne Taylor gives an arresting performance, filled with nuance and vulnerability, that never once loses its grip. Wrapped in all that beauty is something more fragile: a subtle grief for what time can take from us and the love that holds on anyway. It’s one of the best shows of the year, the kind that sits in your chest long after the lights come up.