Bree Wells and the cast of The One Who Calls at Orlando Fringe Credit: Courtesy Photo

Do you ever have a lingering feeling that we are not alone? Then tune into rural public access TV station WZRD circa 1987, as Shawn (Bree Wells) broadcasts her UFO investigation show from a cluttered control room crammed with analog electrical equipment. Like a female Art Bell, she delights in debunking fellow true believers as much as dunking on the dummies at MUFON who don’t take her interstellar sightings seriously, while she receives phone calls from the crank viewers (cleverly planted among the audience) who have formed a kooky kind of community around her show. 

Is Shawn simply making the airwave equivalent of mashed-potato mountains? Or do her paranoid ramblings have a purpose? And could her mysterious heavy-breathing caller and sightings of hovering lights really be the proof of extraterrestrial life she’s been looking for all along? These are just a few of the twisty mysteries exposed in The One Who Calls, an unexpectedly emotion-packed sci-fi drama from award-winning writer-director Bethany Dickens Assaf (The Vast of Space).

Dickens Assaf’s plotting is propulsive, and her cast does an excellent job delivering her dense dialogue with energetic pacing and sharp timing, despite hardly ever being able to make eye contact with each other. However, when evidence of alien contact apparently arrives, it doesn’t seem to excite Shawn as much as I’d expect, and a pivotal sexual subplot doesn’t seem fully integrated into the story’s structure. Finally, on opening night a technical cue at a critical point landed awkwardly, making the ending unintentionally anticlimactic, but that’s an easy fix.

With a tiny bit of polish, this show should stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Dickens Assaf’s other acclaimed works, and it’s highly recommended for fans of thought-provoking classics like Close Encounters and The Outer Limits. Whether — like Fox Mulder — you want to believe, or are just looking for some earthly insight about interpersonal bonds, The One Who Calls is a signal worth adjusting your set to receive.

Midnight Stories (Orlando, FL)
Scarlet Venue, Orlando Family Stage
55 minutes; 13 and up
Tickets: $12

Subscribe to Orlando Weekly newsletters.

Follow us: Apple News | Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Bluesky | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

This article appears in Orlando Fringe 2026.