At 45, John Vega is making the sort of career move most people spend their lives talking themselves out of.
For two decades, the Brooklyn- and Bethel-based massage therapist and acupuncturist built a career helping people heal. Before that, he was a performing arts student at New York City’s LaGuardia High School, where he imagined a future on the stage. Life intervened. Family expectations steered him toward a more practical path, and the artistic ambitions of his youth receded into the background.
Now they’re back—with considerable force. Vega is the founder of the new production company Fabula Obscura, Latin for “dark fables,” and the creator of “Becoming Red,” an original immersive theatrical work coming to Assembly in Kingston on July 24 at 8pm. Combining live vocals, narration, dance, aerial arts, and cinematic projection, the production revisits the world of Little Red Riding Hood—not as an adaptation, but as a psychological sequel that asks what happens after the fairy tale ends.
“It’s a pretty new production company—we launched in March,” Vega says. “I’m reimagining or bringing back to life dark fables, children’s stories, fairy tales, and approaching them with more of a psychological lens and seeing how they can influence us in our modern day.”
The result is less a conventional musical than a hybrid performance. Vega serves as narrator and vocalist, performing 11 pop songs that function as chapters in the story, while aerial artists, dancers, and projected visuals externalize the emotional currents beneath them. Rather than stopping the action, the music becomes the action itself.
That blend of disciplines grew out of Vega’s own unexpected return to performing. Four years ago, while treating a client who happened to produce burlesque and circus shows, he mentioned that he’d always wanted to perform again. She invited him to audition that evening. He landed the role, entering a world of aerial performance and theatrical spectacle that would eventually shape “Becoming Red.”
“Becoming Red” imagines what happens after the familiar fairy tale ends. Having survived the wolf, Red (played by Kat Wise) is celebrated by her village but expected to repay her rescuer by marrying the Woodsman (played by Vega)—a decent man she doesn’t love. Her mother, the embodiment of religious and communal expectations, insists that this is the life she is meant to lead. As Red struggles against those obligations, the story becomes less about escaping a wolf than escaping a life chosen for her. Rather than unfolding through conventional dialogue, the production moves through pop songs sung by Vega, with each selection advancing the narrative while aerial artists, dancers, and cinematic projections give physical form to Red’s emotional journey.
If the production sounds intensely personal, that’s because it is. Although Vega initially imagined the work as an exploration of fairy tale archetypes, he gradually realized he was writing his own story into Red’s journey. In his version, Red survives the wolf only to find herself trapped by another set of expectations, pressured into a life that doesn’t reflect who she truly is.
“So it has to do about me coming out and also my excommunication,” Vega says. Raised in a deeply religious household where he was expected to become a pastor, he instead came out as gay, ending a marriage to a woman and straining family relationships before ultimately rebuilding them years later. “The story, really, is almost autobiographical.”
That realization almost stopped the project. “I almost did not go through with the show because I was worried about what my family would think,” he says. “But I needed to do it to showcase the message that I really wanted to get through, which is that of owning your truth and really feeling like you have the power to voice that.”
Perhaps that’s why “Becoming Red” doesn’t begin with choreography or music. Vega starts with emotion. “For me, it starts with the emotions,” he says. “First, it’s how do I feel about a character? Then comes music selection because the music really does the storytelling.” Once the emotional arc is established, the performers themselves develop much of the movement, turning the production into a collaborative act of interpretation.
“Becoming Red” premiered earlier this year in a warehouse in Bushwick before a second staging at the Hurleyville Performing Arts Center in June. The Assembly performance marks its first presentation in a fully equipped theater—and, Vega says, its final performance before he turns his attention to an even more ambitious original work inspired by Taino folklore and his Puerto Rican heritage.
Whether “Becoming Red” launches a second career for Vega or simply marks one extraordinary creative detour remains to be seen. But there is something inspiring about watching someone in midlife choose uncertainty over security—not because it makes practical sense, but because the story they’ve been carrying for decades has finally insisted on being told.
“Becoming Red” will be staged at Assembly in Kingston on July 24 at 8pm.
