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When playwright and actress Sue Jin Song strips down the stage to its bare necessities for her one-woman show, she also strips away her audience’s emotions and challenges their ideas of reality and responsibility, fantasy and family. “In theater, all you need is an empty space, an audience, and an actor,” explains Song. The result of Song’s creativity in this minimalistic space? Children of Medea, an emotional journey through the lives of two young Korean American girls as they deal with their immigrant parents and the abandonment by their mother. But the coping mechanisms are not easy—at least for the oldest sister, who breaks free from her troubled reality to find comfort in an Alice-in-Wonderland type world, plunging the play into a fractured and puzzling myriad of identity and truth.

Song has a varied acting background, ranging from film and television work (Someone Like You starring Ashley Judd; Law and Order, 24, ER) to performing at comedy clubs and in off-Broadway and regional theater productions. But theater is her first love and true preference. “Theater is really the actor’s medium,” she notes, “you’ve really just got more power.”

A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she remembers being one of the few Asians in her school—at one, point the only one. But theatrical acting allowed her to play a variety of roles, regardless of race, what she describes as “all parts of life” and explore all its transformations.

It is under these transformations of life and living that she wrote Children of Medea. “Transformation is something I really wanted to explore. Transformation of character, of space, of time—and when I first wrote [Medea], I didn’t really know if it was possible to stage,” Song admits. But thanks to one of her friends, theater actor Craig Wallace, she was persuaded to finish writing the play as long as Wallace directed. In summer 2008, the show debuted at the Capital Fringe Festival to rave reviews for Song’s dynamic acting and the plot’s chilling conclusions.

“The show is linear, but it’s from fractured points of view, almost like a kaleidoscope. So as a play, I’m thinking, how can I keep this fractured point of view, but still have the picture clear?” Song relates. For her, the tolls of performing a one-person show are “physically grueling,” and she shares with the audience an intellectually and emotionally grueling journey as well. The story of immigration, assimilation, motherhood, adolescence, all collides onstage, woven skillfully through Song’s voice and actions, but requiring an active audience who can keep up with the constant shifts and changes in characters’ perspectives. “It’s challenging for the audience just like it’s challenging for me,” explains Song.

In the end, Song’s advice to young actors and new people getting involved in theater also reflects her outlook on life. “Just be fearless,” she says. “Live fully, and experience fully.” And in Children of Medea, we see this life philosophy put exactly into play, as Sue Jin Song dives to the heart of our emotions and renders herself, her characters, and her audience vulnerable to the forces of the stage and the power of words.

Children of Medea will be performed at Fort Fringe, 612 L St. NW, Washington DC 20001 on July 12, 16, 17, 19, and 25. Tickets are $15. Check for times and buy tickets online at www.capitalfringe.org