The Politics of the Closet on Broadway

In this preview of shows opening on Broadway this spring, Charles Isherwood fails to mention that three of the four shows he discusses star lesbians. There's Cynthia Nixon* in Rabbit Hole, Lisa Kron of The Five Lesbian Brothers in her own show, The Well, and Cherry Jones in Faith Healer. Now, their lesbianism is not particularly relevant to any of these shows, all of which seem to mostly be about family and the fact that life sucks, so perhaps it's best that Isherwood doesn't sensationalize by mentioning their personal lives. I'm sure there have been plenty of articles that mention lots of gay men on Broadway without talking about their sexuality, but the whole thing does raise the question of where the line between private and closet falls. Might there have been a reason to mention Kron's history with the Five Lesbian Brothers or the WOW Cafe? I, for one, am glad to see lesbian actresses getting work and I think that sexuality isn't a relevant issue in this particular article, but it did make me think about when you do and don't discuss an actor's sexuality.

*NOTE: The assertion of Nixon's queerness may not be entirely accurate; she seems to have refused to confirm or deny the fact (and she is known to have had boyfriends previously), so she can't really be considered an out lesbian actress.

Orton on Broadway

I'm a huge Joe Orton fan. He's funny and dirty and fabulous. So I was thrilled to hear that The Roundabout Theatre is reviving Entertaining Mr. Sloane. I know Sloane backwards and forewards, and yet I would absolutely love to see again. Ben Brantly's preview of perverse British plays opening this spring on Broadway has reminded me why people go to New York to see shows. I certainly wish I had the money to fly out and see shows periodically. As a matter of fact, I would love to see the Roundabout's whole season (how great would Alan Cumming be in Threepenny Opera translated by Wallace Shawn?)

Are Russian Vampires Better?

Nightwatch. (Nochnoi Dozor). Nuart Theatre. 2/25/06.

I really enjoyed Nightwatch. It's a Russian movie adapted from a the first in a trilogy of novels about vampires, an impending apocolypse, and battles between Good and Evil. Its sequel, Daywatch, is apparently already in theaters in Russia. It kind of reminded me of what Constantine should have been if it had been done right.

Overall, I'd say that the movie was extremely well done. It was dark and intense in a creepy, grimy way. It was like The Lord of the Rings or The Matrix in epic action storytelling, but much less visually crisp and clean. Very Russian, I suspect. The plot was complicated, and not always entirely clear, but less confusing than just giving the impression that there was a lot below the surface that may or may not be revealed. While it wasn't precisely morally ambiguous (it's very clear who are the good guys and bad guys), it was complex, with a rather flawed hero. There was plenty of blood, and the violence wasn't pleasurable and satisfying the way it would be in a summer action movie.

Oddly enough, this particlar film is getting recognition for its subtitles, which are a little more artistic than the standard boring white subtitles across the bottom of the screen, but not unusual enough to be irritating. The editing of the film is also notable, though it's sometimes great and sometimes distracting. It moves very fast, which is mostly a good thing that serves to keep the audience engaged but can occasionally be disruptive, especially in the final sequence.

The movie itself has a pretty strong visual sense and moments of brilliance, including an adorable moment when one of the characters watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a beautifully creepy animal-to-human transformation. Some of the fights were hard to follow, but mostly disorienting in a fascinating way.

The New Yorker review of this film is fascinating. I'm not sure the reviewer actually understood the film particuarly well, but he managed to be quite snarky anyway, putting the emphasis more on his own cleverness than the film. So I'd say don't believe him, although I love the line:

The battle between good and evil, in its messy desperation, feels not like a comic-strip confection, as in “X-Men,” but like the foul-tasting hangover of something true.

If Russian vampire action is your kinda thing, go check it out. I'm totally engrosed and will be seeing Daywatch whenever it makes it over.

A mental break

I'm in the middle of some serious work, but I took a little break to read blogs, and what did I come across? This. Now, normally I wouldn't be looking at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue to save my life, but I'm fascinated by the retro pinup style of these photos. It makes me happy when 40s and 50s glamour appears in contemporary culture.

(via kinky bitch.)

Whores are great!

Sex Workers Art Show. Northwest Campus Auditorium. UCLA. 2/14/06.

It's a bad sign when you arrive to see the artists leaving the venue ten minutes after the performance should have started. When I got to the show late (traffic), I was hoping it hadn't begun, but I wasn't expecting to find the audience locked out. The show started half an hour late due to extreme technical difficulties, and while I was initially annoyed, the show was more than worth the wait, and they did a great job of rolling with the punches as the sound cut out spontaneously, microphones only sometimes worked, and technology proved generally unreliable. They went on with the show despite everything, and did an excellent job. Each of the individual performers was excellent, and I will try to talk about all of them, though I will sadly be brief about it. This altogether, despite technical difficulties, was an absolutely wonderful, sexy, brilliant, well-organized show and I encourage everyone who can to get out and see it. The schedule is here.

Annie Oakley organized the show and introduced the performers, but I would have liked to have heard more from her about the project, the artists, herself, anything. I want to listen to what this woman has to say.

Once the show finally started, it began with a beautiful dance piece by Julie Atlas Muz. Muz opened and closed the show, with her first piece involving bondange and stripping, and her closing piece entitled "Bloodbath." Both were short, simple, and stunning. She has a beautiful body and she uses it with wonderful skill and expression. She had a rough time with an audience that wasn't warmed up and didn't know what to expect, but that's no indictment of her skill. It was just strange to be cheering loudly for a naked women, whose performance was so clearly beautiful and artistic, especially with a modest audience of mostly queers, feminists, and other people particularly sensitive to exploitation. It took a little encouragement to convince us to be vocal, but once the crowd warmed up, we really did love the performers.

Tralala Farsi Sentiamo really broke in the audience by reading a fun, not entirely erotic piece about sex work. She encouraged us to laugh and cheer, and got a really great atmosphere going.

Scarlot Harlot, "one of the foremothers of the sex workers' rights movement," performed a great Dworkin/McKinnon spoof, then stripped to her fabulous unrepentant whore self and performed a song about her weight. Her performance was fierce and fun and fabulous, and she's really a force of nature.

Michelle Tea was really the one I was there to see. I've read several of her books, and I think Rent Girl is the greatest thing ever and I would recommend it to anyone. But, despite my adoration, I had never seen Michelle Tea perform. I had seen her in person, at several of Katastrophe's shows and once just on the streets of San Francisco, but I'd never heard her read. It turns out she's an amazing performer as well as an amazingly talented writer; she chose a great, hilarious selection from Rent Girl and she read it perfectly with wonderful clarity and expression and animation. She's another one I would just love to listen to her talk for as long as she was willing to do so. I can't wait for Rose of No Man's Land and I hope she does a book tour!

Simone de la Getto of Harlem Shake Burlesque performed a fun burlesque strip number, and then sang a song, for which the music cut out in the middle and she continued fabulously. She is quite a performer, and although there were scary moments as she gave audience members lap dances, in general she had a great connection to the audience and a great performance in general.

The adorable Bridget Irish perfomed a wacky reverse strip tease in which she emerged onstage naked and in secret agent fashion she had to find articles of her clothing stashed all over the theater. Despite the stripping of other performers, there was something much more disconcerting about a naked lady running through the theater. It felt like a real triumph and a relief when she managed to find and put on her bra!

Juba Kalamka of The Deep Dick Collective performed a fascinating song/performance piece entitled something like (I may be wrong about this) "Requiem for a Nigga Ass 'Ho." It was an intense, serious piece displaying his musical range and skill.

All of these performers were selling merchandise, and I wanted it all. I bought a Sluts Unite T-shirt for the sheer audacious fabulousness of it (I'm not sure if/when I'll wear it). But I kind of also wanted a Sex Workers' Art Show t-shirt (the one with the mud flap girl); if I weren't quite so broke, I totally would have bought that, too. And I came home later and realized I should have also purchased Rough Tongues: Femmes Write Porn as a V-day present to myself, so I ordered it from Amazon. I will probably also break down and purchase Scarlot Harlot's book, Unrepentant Whore as well; I bet it's great. Overall, for a free show it cost me $21, but these women deserve my money; they were pretty darn awesome. If anyone outside of LA reads this, and the show's coming to your town, by all means get your ass there and bring plenty of cash. You'll be glad.

Transitional Violence

Imani Henry. B4T. Highways Performance Space. 2/9/06.

I'm glad Imani Henry is telling his story. B4T is an interesting and valuable look at the pains and difficulties of three "Black, masculine, female-bodied people." These are stories that need to be told, and I am very much glad that I heard them. Henry is a talented performer, doing a fairly good job at establishing separation between 3 similar characters and doing an excellent job at keeping the audience engaged throughout. He talks skillfully at the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality, and those positions and perspectives are important.

What bothered me about this piece, however, was its conceptualization of transition. B4T didn't seem particularly intended to educate the viewer about transition in any way, which is fine, but it consistently depicted testosterone or medical transition as a violent rupture in the speakers' lives, and I'm not entirely comfortable with that. For LaShawnda, the most visibly female-bodied of the three characters, the decision to transition was configured to suggest suicide. For Keith, who seems to be post-transition but reminiscing, he discusses how he could never go back, couldn't or wouldn't go to a high school reunion or see the friends who knew him to be a girl however much he was one of the guys. For Imani, the violence is in his inability to explain an impending transition to his dying grandmother, the enforced silence that comes from a not entirely accepting family.

The other thing that bothered me about the piece was its profound rejection of the term 'lesbian.' While it's perfectly understandable that these characters who don't consider themselves women might have problems with being labeled 'lesbian,' the revulsion for the term wasn't carefully teased out in this piece. Keith's absent interviewer, placed in a strange position of authority by her absence and seemingly elevated posiiton, was apparently a lesbian and Keith asked her 'why can't you tell your own stories,' creating and exacerbating a distance between himself as subject and the interveiwer as academic, lesbian, and seeminly priviledged. There was an extremely difficult moment, almost unexplored, in which Keith said that his girlfriend of 10 years was a lesbian, and it was profoundly unclear about whether that meant that she still identifies as lesbian or just that she did when they met. And either way, how does he feel about that? How does she feel about that? These absent female partners were pushed into an extemely awkward erasure throughout the piece in that both Kieth and Imani acknowledged girlfriends, but failed to represent them or even talk about them coherently Similarly, the butch and FTM person of color slide show that bridged the gap of a costume change featured several photos in which the subjects were kissing girlfriends, but those girlfriends were similarly unrecognized.

The success of B4T is in performing 3 different characters telling their stories in relationship to race, gender, and identity. The failure was in showing why and how these were three different characters. Why and how weren't they 3 aspects of Imani telling his own story? Would it have been more powerful speaking from a place of explicit identity rather than semi-autobiographical fiction? I would have liked to see more about where and why these characters divereged and conflicted. Why and how were each of them before T? I found myself wondering how long Henry had been performing this piece. How distant is the moment before T? How has this piece changed as his body has changed? Why not tell a story after T? B4T is a step in the right direction in terms of making more explorations of identity available and raising issues related to gender and sexuality. There are a lot more steps out there, and I'm excited to see them all.

I think I've got a V-day plan!

It appears that The Sex Workers' Art Show is going to be in LA on Valentine's Day. First of all, the universe is clearly trying to kill me; I'm far too busy for ANOTHER show that I must see. Second of all, why did I not know about this? Third of all, I must go. How could I miss Michelle Tea and Scarlot Harlot?

Here's some copy from the show's website:

The show is a critically-acclaimed eye-popping evening of visual and performance art created by people who work in the sex industry to dispel the myth that they are anything short of artists, innovators, and geniuses!

The wildly-successful cabaret-stlye show is hitting the road again to bring audiences a blend of burlesque, spoken workd, music, and multimedia performance art as well as a visual art display that travels with the show. Intelligent and hot, disturbing and hilarious, the performances offer a wide range of perspectives on sex work, from celebration of prostitution and sex-positivity to views from the darker sides of the industry.

The '50s were sooo kinky!

Monroe, Marilyn. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. 1953.

Wow, this movie was strange and different and even kind of hot. I totally loved it. Monroe called her boyfriend 'Daddy' throughout the movie, which sounds so weird to contemporary ears. You certainly don't hear things like that now. Also, there were strange situations involving a young (pre-adolescent) boy actually admitting he had a sex drive and kind of ridiculously hitting on Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. You might sometimes see that today, but it's something that freaks us out much more these days.

The thing that really got me was the bondage chandelier. In the "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" dance number, there were, for no apparent reason, several girls dressed in strips of black fabric or leather and chains holding up candelabras. It seemed very kinky and completely unnecessary. Is this the evolution or a mimickry of a Bugsby Berkeley dance number?

The movie in general was delightful, but odd. Though it rather scandalized me, this demonstrated that the '50s, at least in this manifestation, were better about being open (and not guilty) about sex than movies are now. Richard Dyer (Heavenly Bodies) argues that Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is the least appropriate of Monroe's movies for her personality, and I sort of understand that. Lorelei was an interesting character, but Monroe's breathy innocence seems inconguous with Lorelei's cynical greed. It makes her seem really creepy and manipulative, which is odd because you're sort of supposed to sympathize with her.

Anyway, I completley enjoyed this movie. It was fun and amazing, and the campy Jane Russell and the naked athletes scene featured in The Celluloid Closet was especially wonderful. I totally see why Monroe was seen, according to Dyer, as the embodiment of a pure and natural sexuality breaking away from conservative morality. I love it!

Seriously, though, despite all of the feminist film theory I've been reading, I was very much seduced by the spectacle and visual pleasure of this film. The costumes were lush and gorgeous, and Monroe and Russell were a striking and dynamic pair. And with Russell's height and sharp features, the two of them would make a lovely butch/femme couple. And of course, the utter, ridiculous, nonsensical, outrageousness of the whole plot and situation of the movie kept me broadly entertained.

Not sure I know what to say about this one

Pappa Tarahumara. Ship in a View UCLA Live. Royce Hall. 2/4/06.

I tend to be suspicious of anything where a synopsis or review claims that their work is "capturing the enduring wonder and indescribable beauty in all things", and I'm still rather suspicious after seeing this performance. Pappa Tarahumara is a Japanese modern dance troupe that is, I believe, vaguely butoh-inspired. I have nothing like the vocabulary and knowledge to provide an informed review of their performance, and I make no pretense to understanding it, but I will say that I felt fairly intellectually engaged. Pieces of it kind of reminded me of Merce Cunningham work I've seen (or at least the bicycle bit from Variations V). The LA Times Review provides a decent thrashing of the work. The production was cool and grey and the effect overall was rather mind-numbing, although I didn't know what was going on, so I was paying fairly close critical attention. There was some gesture toward a plot and setting, but it was unclear and poorly developed. Supposedly the production was a representation of a seaside town in the 60s, but I'm not sure how I was supposed to know that other than the fact that the program told me.

I did have a rather large problem with the piece in terms of gender, though. There were some interesting gender issues, including the fact that one (or possibly two) members of the ensemble were men wearing dresses, which was curious in a good way. The bad thing, however, was that the production seemed incredibly phallocentric. There was a giant pole in the middle of the stage, for goodness sake. And twice, men climbed the pole to perform, but women never did. There was also a man (not in a dress) who sat upstage center for almost the the entire performance in a clear position of patriarchal authority. I found him rather suspicious. And, most of all, there were two women who seemed to represent aspects of female sexuality, and whenever either of these two women, the one with the curly hair and the one with the bob, did anything suggestive or overly wild, they were punished with sexual violence. There were two moments in which the woman with the curly hair was roughly embraced by a man whenever she got close or flirtatious with him and she had to break away violently. The girl with the bobbed hair, at some point near the end of the show, spent a few minutes with her dress up showing the audience her underwear for no apparent reason. Immediately following that, she was practically nailed to some boards upstage. The gender and sexuality in this performance was profoundly disturbing to me.

The most frustrating thing about the performance was its false ending. There were several points where it felt like it was building to a climax and a conclusion that never came. At about an hour and 15 minutes into the production, they were in the middle of something that felt very much like the end. It was about my limit of endurance and the music seemed to be reaching an ending and I was all ready to start clapping and watch them take their bows, but NO, without giving the audience any kind of mental break they continued into a whole new section where everyone changed clothes and they did it all for no apparent reason. This new section seemed in no way dramatically different from any of the other work that came before.

Reasons to love a musician

I ordered katastrophe's new CD, fault, lies, and faultlines as a little birthday present for myself and it arrived today. I haven't even listened to the CD yet, and I'm already in love with it, and katastrophe, because with the CD I got a handwritten note thanking me for the order and telling me "I hope that you enjoy the CD and you find a special song." It's a small gesture, but I found it totally sweet. It made me want to give him more money, or at least to order a new copy of Let's f*ck, then talk about my problems (a CD which I loaned to a friend and never got back). Maybe after the next paycheck. Anyway, I look forward to listening to fault, lies, and faultlines.

"There's nothing wrong with being alone"

"What gives you the audacity to believe you've failed if you can't make life or stop death?
Because I was taught if I was a good girl and worked hard I could" - An American Daughter

Wendy Wasserstein died. I'd been hearing for a while about her cancer, but it's still a great loss. She was only 55.

Her New York Times Obituary calls her a "Chronicler of Women's Identity Crises," which I believe does her a disservice, though the article itself below the headline does a much better job of explaining exactly why and how she mattered so much. She was one of the few women playwrights who consistently, sucessfully had plays produced on Broadway. And she wrote strong roles for strong women. Isherwood describes her as a predecessor to Sex in the City, but she dealt with the lives of women who, though equally privileged, felt very real to me rather than fanciful romantic constructions of wealth and glamour. Female friendships, family relationships, feminist politics, and single motherhood suffused many of her plays. I regret thoroughly that I have never actually seen a production of one of Wasserstein's plays, but as an undergraduate in college I read them and fell in love with them.

I will honor her by reading one of her plays tonight, and I hope others will consider doing the same. She was a wonderful female voice in a theater that remains very much a boy's club, and she deserves recognition as a major American playwright. She won a Pulitzer Prize and wrote roles for which actresses like Lynn Thigpen won Tonys, but I never studied her in a drama class and only discovered her when assigned a scene from one of her plays in an acting class. She, like many other female playwrights, was marginalized and underestimated because she wrote about women. I hope now she will get the recognition she deserves for her bold theatrical discussions of gender in our society today.

UPDATE: Jill Dolan writes a beautiful post about the ambivalences surrounding Wasserstein's feminism of the priveledged. She calls her assimilationist and questions her for not being more critical, but raises the question of whether or not that's a bad thing. It's a beautiful reflection on memorializing someone about whose work you've been critical in the past.

A happy birthday story

This story made me very happy. Yay!

L!: The Lesbian Musical!

The Breakup Notebook. Hudson Backstage Theater, Hollywood. 1/27/06.

Apparently, lesbian musicals are a good place to meet gay men. Or at least the audience was filled with them this particular night. The Breakup Notebook was a totally fun, funny, lesbian-themed musical and there was a lot of laughing out loud throughout the show. The music was fun and happy and generally really well done and the cast clearly worked hard and were quite talented. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole evening.

While everything layered on top of the basic structure of the play was pretty fun and fabulous, something about it deep down bothered me a bit. I think it may have gone through too many rewrites and its strayed a long way from its original concept. The whole "Break Up Notebook" of the title appeared in the first scene, but was never mentioned again. The play had nothing to do with a notebook.

What really bothered me, however, was the main character. She was constructed as this lipstick lesbian everywoman, but I didn't really sympathize with her. I frequently found her neurosis more annoying than endearing, and the conclusion. Heidi Godt performed admirably, but the conclusion in which the character takes charge and finally dumps a girl feels more like a therapy session than a dramatic accomplishment. Rather than learning to be independent, the character ends a relationship because the girl she's seeing doesn't want a commitment. Basically, the whole play builds to a very conservative celebration of monogamy.

Much more interesting than Helen, however, were Patrick Bristow as Helen's gay best friend, Bob, and Melody Butiu and Jacqueline Maloney as Helen's lesbian friends were wonderful. Each delivered a nuanced and hilarious performance. I was more interested in the saga of Monica and Joanie's wedding than I was in Helen's tribulations. Monica (Melody Butiu) played the only even vaguely butch role in the whole play, and she did so masterfully. Patrick Bristow as Bob was wonderfully funny but not horribly stereotypically campy, which was nice. The only problem I had with him was that in the hilarious "Chicks and Dicks Bossa Nova" in which Bob and Helen make fun of the stereotypes of lesbians and gay men respectively, Bristow does a great impression of a lesbian, including many stereotypes that could apply to Helen, but then Helen neither mocks Bob effectively nor evokes stereotypes remotely similar to Bob. She mimics circuit queens and twinks, while Bob is a nice gay nerd with glasses.

Christine Lakin gave stand out character performances, especially in her rock star solo, "I'm on Fire." The only problem was that compared to Helen, she looked to be about 12 and thus the whole scene had a weird dynamic. I wondered what it would have looked like to have that role played by someone a bit more butch and less manic.

Speaking of butch, this show wasn't. This was clearly promoting the L-Word version of Los Angeles lesbians, all with long hair and too much makeup. The only conceivable relationship within the play seemed to be very vanilla, very monogamous, very conservative. Even the supposedly butch Monica ended up getting married in an L-Word reminiscent tight-fitting girly suit.

So while I've complained a lot about some fairly nitpicky issues related to this play, the music is great, the performances are fabulous, and I spent a large portion of the evening laughing out loud. Even though it bothers me a bit politically, I still very much enjoyed the show and would recommend it to anyone looking for a fun queer-themed night at the theater.

Sound and Fury

"Teenage Papi: The Remix." Butchlalis de Panochtitlan. Highways Performance Space. 1/26/06.

Watching the butchlalis develop is like a relationship. There was that first flirtation in Akbar oh so long ago. Their first Highways show was a casual party hookup, when we were both too drunk and fumbling to know better but it ended up being hot anyway. This show had the awkwardness of a hot date, long after that one night stand. The things that went wrong before went better, but there's still a lot of communication and mutual exploration that needs to happen.

The butchlalis are some pretty hot boiz, and this time they manage to carry the whole show all by themselves. There were high moments and low moments, some awkward scenes that were a little flat, but overall the show was fun and wonderfully sexually charged. The two pieces right before intermission, "Enema" and "BDSM" were quite kinky, which was challenging to watch.

Many things about this show improved from their last performance. The pace, especially at the beginning, was stepped up to make the performance flow and music maintained the energy between scenes. The video seemed to be more effectively integrated with the live performance. Some of their pieces were much more clear, though they still have a tendency to be abstract rather than direct about what they're trying to say. And may of the pieces are static, with too much emphasis on words detracting from their hot macha physicality.

The butchlalis claim to be interested in connecting their performances with the geography of the gendered and racialized city, and that also came through a lot of their pieces more clearly this time. Gentrification and the changing landscape of "Los Scandales" (LA) became a more vivid in the connection between lesbian softball and Chavez Ravine, and in the metamorphasis of a Chicana Lesbian club into a punk club. Their excavation of Redz as a lesbian bar was fascinating, although a strange note on which to end the show.

Anyway, I highly recommend you head on over to Highways and enjoy the butch stlyings of these little papis while they last. I highly suspect that Friday and Saturday nights will have the rockin' and enthusiastic audience that the Thursday show lacked and these bois will definitely have you squirming in your seats with all of their mind-fucking performance action. I would gladly have gone home with any of these bois, especially when they were brandishing cocks and whips. Hot.

99 Cent Spectacle

Roht, Ken. Route 99: Orange Star Dinner Show. The Evidence Room. 1/13/06

The 99 cent show is an Evidence Room Holiday tradition, and I hear that it is always fabulous. This year's version is quite spectacular. It was fun and in general an amazing experience. The concept behind the show is that the sets and costumes were made from materials donated by the 99 Cent Only stores. This included A LOT of aluminum foil on the sets, and the costumes seemed to be made mostly from tablecloths or shower curtains, something strange and plastic-y anyway. While this all sounds like a weird concept, the show itself was wonderful. The plot was wacky and campy, the huge cast was quite talented, and the show moved incredibly quickly.

Now the exciting thing about the production was that it really was a dinner theater show. As in, you had the choice of paying an extra $10 for a meal with the show. The four course meal (appetizers, salad, chicken, and dessert) was wonderfully tasty, though sitting onstage eating while people were dancing around you was a little awkward, especially at first (they cleared the appetizers before I really felt done with them). And those of us having dinner really were in the middle of the show, including being frequently asked by cast members whether we liked the meal or not. While this was a little strange, the show itself was worth awkward moments of audience participation.

I highly recommend this show, though if you don't like audience participation, you might not want to eat dinner there. But if you're not shy, go ahead and do it; the food is quite good. The cast was wonderful, singing and dnancing their hearts out through a strange and silly, but totally fun plot. The show I attended was sadly underattended (they had a sold-out run before Christmas, but I'm not sure that it's doing as well after the holiday). So the show is extended through the end of the month, and rush out to see it while you can. If nothing else, the fabulous wigs and strange plastic costumes are enough attraction to make it worth your while.

Sister Insider

Carr, C. On Edge: Perfromance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.

On Edge is a collection of C. Car's essays for the Village Voice, mostly covering performance art. Ironically, her introduction claims that underground performance peaked in 1985, but all of her articles come from the late '80s. The articles are incredibly valuable as documents of the work of Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, Annie Sprinkle, Chris Burden, etc. And a few of the articles are quite brilliant and really well-written (I particularly enjoyed "Splendour in the Crass" and her pieces on Mapplethorpe and censorship). Overall, I very much recommend this book for those who are interested in '80s performance artists.

I did, however, have a problem with a lot of Carr's writing. While I appreciate the immense value of these essays as a cultural record, I didn't quite enjoy her tone. She seemed to be trading mostly on her freindship with these artists. Her attitude verged on the superior and condescending, invested more in demonstrating how hip and in with these artists she is rather than thoroughly examining the work. There's a strange way in which these articles are not reviews and aren't really analysis, they're just a strange, not always complete description. Carr seems to be trading on her insider status and the cache of the 'bohemia' about which she writes, but doesn't quite capture or even seem to understand the energy and the politics that animated these performances.

Intellectual and Erotic Stimulation

Bright, Susie. Mommy's Little Girl: On Sex, Motherhood, Porn & Cherry Pie. New York: Thunder Mouth Press, 2003.

I've been reading Susie Bright's blog for a while now, and I generally enjoy it very much. She is often interesting, clever, and insightful with a wonderful combination of useful information about the world of sexuality and culture and delightful tidbits from her personal world. In fact, I get enough pleasure out of Susie Bright's blog that I felt like maybe I should be supporting her in some way. I did donate an almost insignificant amount to her "change jar," but as a grad student not actually making enough to pay for my schoolbooks, I thought that the least I could do was buy a couple of her more recent books to offer me some delightful diversion from the history and theory that I should be reading.

At first I was dubious about Mommy's Little Girl; the last thing I wanted was my favorite liberal, nonmonogamous, radical sexpert doing was telling me all about how cute her daughter was or how great it was to have a nuclear family. Bleh. But Mommy's Little Girl is nothing like that. Susie Bright remains as fun and brilliant and insightful as ever, and this book contains some truly delightful tidbits. Her reflections on the 1940s pinups by Alberto Vargas were vibrant and wonderful, though dimmed by the fact that images she referenced could not (for money and copyright issues, I'm sure) be included in the book and were difficult to locate online. While the first section of the book does include several essays on different aspects of motherhood, Bright reveals herself to be the cool liberal mommy that one might imagine without preaching proper parenting in any way. A later section of the book includes an tiny little travelogue in the form of a book tour diary and Bright's succint description of her visit to each city was clear and insteresting and beautiful. I do have a question, however; in one of the final essays of the book, Bright mentions seeing 'her' brand of vibrator, condom, lube, etc. By 'her brand' she means the ones she has been recommending for years. While I'm well aware of her promotion of the Hitachi Magic Wand in terms of vibrators, why do I have no idea what she was talking about in terms of condoms and lube? Did I somehow miss these in earlier writings, or disregard them as irrelevant to my life in some strange way? If I go back and reread your older books will I find them, magical recommendations buried somewhere among your insights? Because of this reference, I feel like I need to know. What are Susie Bright's favorite condoms and lube?

One thing that suprised me greatly was the amount of reflection on Los Angeles in this book. Considering that Bright lives in Northern California and geography and travel aren't exactly the main subjects of the collection, her insights about my current home are both brilliant and tragic. She describes LA as an "illusion-factory incarnate" and notes the tyrrany of perfect femininity that is part of the local culture. But it was heartbreaking and true to read "There is no love here! Anyone can get laid, but no one can have a realtionship. Everything is ephemeral; passion doesn't last...When you live in a town that's based on the values of a stage, what do you expect? I don't know how to fall in love in LA anymore, either." I'd very much like to believe that the desolation and illusion are not all there is to LA, but I'm not so sure.

The magic of this book, despite the bits with Los Angeles (and New York certainly doesn't fare any better), is that it is joyful, hopeful, celebratory throughout. Even in Bright's reflections on the death of a good friend, her writing is life-affirming. Bright takes such obvious pleasure in friends, family, sex, and cherry pie that she communicates that joy and openness to her readers. This book made me want to dance, to scream, to make love; anything to appreciate the simple pleasures of the world that are so profound, yet so easily neglected. The book made me fall a little more in love, both with Susie Bright and with the world.

Junk Reading

This Winter Break, I have read Terry Pratchett's newest paperback, Going Postal, Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe (look for a brilliant post comparing these two sometime soon), Jaime Hernandez's Love and Rockets #13, Chester Square, a graphic novel called Charm School about a teenaged lesbian witch, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, and Lucifer book 3, A Dalliance with the Damned. For those of you keeping score that is TWO scifi/fantasy novles, FOUR graphic novels, and absolutely NOTHING academic or relevant to post-WWII theater. Eep.

This article, however, makes me feel much better. Just call me a book slut!

New Year, Not so Resolute

I'm not a big one for resolutions - I'm too undisciplined in general, and it always feels a little trite somehow. But over a very late brunch on New Year's Day, I made some sweeping statements that would actually be fairly nice to follow through with throughout the year. They included:

1. More Brunch! I think this is an excellent resolution. There are many, many brunch places in Los Angeles that I would love to explore and I always love suggestions for new ones. While Toast is always wonderful (though I love the sandwiches as much as if not more than the brunches) and you can't beat House of Pies, I would love to find new and exciting favorites. I've been to the Griddle once and would love to go back. There's a Jinky's by my house that I've never been to. We keep meaning to go to Prasadam in Silverlake. I hear Bread and Porridge is great. And then of course, there's always potluck brunch with my friends, which is an excellent thing to do at any time.

2. Explore LA. Going to San Francisco always makes me long for cheap and easy and amazingly good Indian and Mexican restaurants in LA. They must exist. I have no idea where. I want to find more of the tasty, kitchy, wonderful holes in the wall throughout Los Angeles. Perhaps I should keep a list of places I'm meaning to try so that I'll have them when we've got no idea where to go or what to eat. Again, recommendations always welcome.

3. Get out of Los Angeles. No, I'm not moving anytime soon, and I don't mean going to Orange County to visit my parents, but there are a lot of fun places to explore both near and far. I'm hoping to get to Chicago for a conference or two, and up to San Francisco once every few months. Maybe I'll be able to go to New York for research over the summer. I hope to go up and visit friends in Santa Barabara sometime soon. A recent day trip to San Luis Obispo for wine-tasting and exploring was and excellent start on the wacky daytrip with friends motif, which I love.

I feel like these resolutions are fun and do-able. And there will, of course, being no keeping track so I can't feel guilty about them. But they all encourage spending time with friends, which is always excellent and a high priority in my life.

Fluffy but fun

Wilson, Sandy. The Boyfriend. dir. Julie Andrews. Orange County Performing Arts Center.

This is a 2005 production of a 1950s musical about the 1920s. Talk about fun with historical displacement! Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut in The Boyfriend in 1954. She directed this version for the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut, from which it began a national tour. The show itself was fun and interesting, and though it had some problems, overall I realy enjoyed it. It was cute and sweet, and the music was upbeat and really stuck in your head.

The fact that Andrews, who played the female lead, directed the show, seemed evident in this production. The moment that that character, Polly, appeared on stage, the whole thing seemed bright and cute and really made sense. Jessica Grové as Polly gave a particularly excellent performance. She managed to be a sweet, innocent ingenue without being obnoxious about it. I found her perfectly charming. When she wasn't around, things felt a little off. That might have something to do with the way the play is written, but to me the ensemble was confusing; they were neither full and unique characters, nor a unified group of backup dancers. They were Polly's schoolgirl friends and their boyfriends, and two of the girls had their own songs, but nothing distinguished the others from each other and it felt kind of weird.

Another problem with this production was the set, which was adorable and cartoony and bright and fun, but it felt like it was trying to fill up a stage that was too large. The result of this strategic space-wasting was that the whole production felt too small for such a big space and especially such a large audience. But really, this is a fairly good production of a silly, fluffy little version of the 1920s. While it would never qualify as great theater, it was quite diverting and very pleasant and I encourage anyone to see it, especially if you're in the mood for a pretty, well-paced escapist fantasy.