My Sordid Past

OK, so here's my dirty little secret: I used to be a performance artist. I know, I know, it's so '90s.

Primarily between 1988-1999 I did performance work in galleries, nightclubs, universities and on the street. While some was typically theatrical and stage-bound, a lot of it was more about processes and procedures I set up in my daily life. I did a lot of pieces about trying to force absurdly scientific and quantitative grids and systems upon irrational forces such as love, sex and relationships. (Which was ironic later when I explored being a social scientist in grad school.) This work has been profiled in Harper’s magazine as well as National Public Radio's This American Life.

I also served for two years as Managing Editor of P-form, a journal of performance and alternative art. In 1998 I guest-edited a special issue on performance and the pornographic, which evolved into the book Strategic Sex, which also featured a lot of pornographers and performance artists. Although I still do things onstage occassionally with my friends, my ex-boyfriends these days do more performance art and staged events than I do.

Performance Stuff, 1988-2005:

One of These Things is Not Like the Other
Live video performance adapted from my novel.
Septmenber 4, 2005. Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Starbucks Literary Stage, Alki Room, Seattle.

Misc. Cabaret, Seattle
Original solo and collaborative performances in nightclubs including the Bus Stop, Catwalk, BAR, Vogue, and the Rendezvous. Partners in crime include the Slice of the Apple Dancers, the Swedish Housewife, and Sylvia O'Stayformore.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - The Remix
Lesson learned from this performance: Pedialyte makes a great mixer! Collaborative performance with Mark Mitchell, Kurt B. Reighly, and Matthew Swank; based on the play by Edward Albee.
Paradise Hotel, a part of the 2002 Seattle Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Exchanging Hats
The text for this piece was almost entirely taken from the lettters and poetry of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. It was a polyvocal, nonlinear pomo affair (with song and dance!) that was definitely unlike anything else at the conference. Collaborative performance with Jennifer Natalya Fink and Valarie Moses for The Art of Elizabeth Bishop: An International Conference and Celebraçào. May 19-21, 1999, Ouro Preto, Minas Gerais, Brazil. 

Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (excerpt)
Mother Camp...  is a classic anthropology text by Esther Newton. She did her field research with drag queens in Chicago and St. Louis in the late ’60s and published her results in 1972. The book is a fascinating portrait of pre-Stonewall culture, revealing how much things have changed for some people, but not for others.  In the end, it is less about queers and camp than it is about class struggle and subcultural survival in American society. Due to time constraints and my attempt at traditional acting, I don't think my  performance came anywhere close to doing this book justice. I've written a full-length play instead that I hope to produce some day with a real actor.
Solo for On The Boards' New Works Festival, April 24-26, 1997, Seattle. 

Virus Logic, StarHustler's Debut
Solos for Black Sheets magazine benefit, July 20, 1996, 848 Community Space, San Francisco.

Instruction (a retroactive performance)
Solo for Second Annual Performance Studies Conference, March 22, 1996, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Love Inventory
Among other things, Love Inventory contained the results of a year-long inventory of all the evidence of love in my life, given and received: use of the word "love," sex, nonverbal expressions, gifts, etc.
Commissioned solo for Oregon Biennial, July 29, 1995, Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR.

Visions of Death in 1987
This was the original title of my first novel, Execution, Texas: 1987. While I was still trying to sell the manuscript, I developed a stage version of excerpts with music and film. The full piece was presented on a double bill with Flora Durham, a fabulous Portland poet. I also did excerpts in San Francisco.
Excerpts for Black Sheets magazine benefit, Jan. 14, 1995, 848 Community Space, San Francisco. Full performance evening, Aug. 25-27, 1994, Rexall Rose, Portland OR. Photo by Michelle Manes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slices: Biannual Report on Status of Relationship with Significant Other
For six months my lover and I filled out weekly questionnaires rating aspects our relationship such as communication, intimacy, sex, etc. We also audio taped and transcribed significant conversations, and amassed over 70 hours of video footage of our relationship. This material was all compiled and presented as a corporate-shareholders-type meeting.
Video screening only, June 1995, Chicago Filmmakers, Chicago IL.  Jan. 14, 1994, The Pound, Seattle; Third National Graduate Students Conference on Queer Studies, April 15-17, 1993, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; 4/2-3, 1993, N.A.M.E., Chicago. Photos by David Eckard, Susan Abelson.

 

 

 

 

 

Love is all Around
I seem to recall this involved the Ray Conniff Singers' version of the Mary Tyler Moore theme and my pulling raw turkey necks out of my shorts...
Solo for Club Lower Links' 4th Anniversary, May 22, 1992, Chicago. 

Mustard Seeds
Gurlene and Gurlette Hussy (Doug Stapleton and Randy Esslinger) were a Chicago postmodern genderfuck neo-drag troupe I often worked with. Randy died of the AIDS in 1993; Gurlette still performs in Chicago, having evolved into a fab butoh/drag persona unlike anything I've ever seen. This event was a tribute to the impending closure of Club Lower Links, a major crucible for performance in Chicago in the early ’90s.  My piece was developing more Execution... material.
Solo for "Gurlene and Gurlette’s There's Got to be a Morning After" July 25, 1992, Club Lower Links, Chicago. 

Drag Queen Medea
Randy Esslinger (Gurlette Hussy) headed up this collaborative play we all co-wrote.  In our retelling of  Euripides' tragedy, Medea was the mother of a 1970s drag show  troupe. She kills her drag-queen "children" to get revenge on their father (Jason, the club owner, whom I played). I just love doing the classics. In Seattle in 2000 I ended up investing  in another drag/medea play, All About Medea, by my pal Mark Mitchell.
March 6-14, 1992, at Club Lower Links, Chicago

The Final Product
This piece was about resisting oversimplified gay identities and placing faith in the sensual.  In the scene above I'm dancing around to Vikki Carr's "It Must Be Him," after bursting blood bags in my underwear and talking about Jeffrey Dahmer. After doing this show, I had a guy come up to me in the grocery store and say, "Hey — you're that blood guy, aren't you?" The film "Wig Kingdom" was a collaborative short shot at the Kawashaway Radical Faerie land sanctuary in Minnesota.
Solo performance/film evening, Feb. 8, 1992, Club Lower Links, Chicago.
Excerpts from The Final Product:
- "Jonathan/John/Jeffery" for Randolph Street Gallery's "In Through the Out Door" series, May 22-23, 1992, Chicago; for "Joan Jett Blakk's Hallo-Thang" Nov. 2, 1991, Blue Rider Theater, Chicago. Gurlene & Gurlette got our good friend Terence Smith to emerge from a 15-year drag retirement, and Joan Jett Blakk was (re)born. Joan ended up running for Mayor of Chicago and President — twice — and becoming a fabulous San Francisco celebrity talk show host.
- "Brand New Day" and "Wig Kingdom" for "Thax Douglas’ Ultimate Sports Show" Jan. 4, 1992, Club Lower Links, Chicago. 
- "Brand New Day" for "Gurlene and Gurlette’s A Day Without Basketball," visiting artists sponsored by Gay and Lesbian Student Union, Dec. 3, 1991, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  This was G&G's take on the annual Day Without Art AIDS awareness event (in the wake of Magic Johnson). Photo by Deb Levie.

Christmas with Little Marcy
"The most obscure cultural reference of the evening!" raved Mitchell Stevens in the New Art Examiner. This G&G show ended with a "We Are the World" food fight.
Solo for "Gurlene and Gurlette’s Dysfunctional Family Christmas" Dec. 11, 1991, Club Lower Links, Chicago.  Photo by Deb Levie.

Guidelines for Resisting Heterosexist Stereotypes Within a Same-Sex Relationship
"You're a lesbian, Travers!" yelled Achy Obejas  the crowd.
Solo for Thax Douglas' "The Ultimate Sports Show" Aug. 28, 1991, Club Lower Links, Chicago.

Mr. Sad, Little White Cloud, Sex, Candy, Where the Streets Have No Name, Georgy Girl, Guidelines...
Solo and collaborations for "Gurlene and Gurlette’s Summer Camp" Summer weekends, 1991, Club Lower Links, Chicago.

Tom Cruised
Solo for "SPEW: The Homographic Convergence" SPEW was the first big  queer zine convention. I dressed like Tom Cruise in Risky Business and danced around to ABBA, I think. With a dildo.
May 25, 1991, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago. 

My Current Lover and an Ex Read My Diaries at Random
I put my current lover and an ex separately in a room with me, a video camera, and seven years of my diaries and journals. They could read anything they wanted, but they had to read it aloud, on tape, and I couldn't comment.
Video presentation of private performance, May 11, 1991, SAIC Thesis Exhibition, Chicago. 

Queer News Network Searching for alternate forms of activism, I started sending queer propaganda to people and businesses in five neighborhoods I'd randomly selected. I wanted to see what would happen if the spectacle of big street protests was removed, and the action was put in a very intimate, personal context: literally coming into people's homes. I only got one hate letter.
Didactic mailings to and explorations of local areas, 11/90-4/91, Chicago. 

060590 in 485 Actions
I distilled a 24-hour period into a list of 485 discrete actions.
Solo for "End of the Year" Dec. 31, 1990, NAME, Chicago. 

Reclaiming Our Virginity (Doughnuts will be Served)
Added that subtitle (and really served doughnuts) so we'd get a good audience. I remember the songs 'Car Wash' and 'Be My Baby," and fake sign language...?
Group performance, Dec. 7, 1990, SAIC Friday Night Performance Series, Chicago.

Not Just Jim
Collaborative group performance directed by Ishmael Houston Jones. This piece was the result of a fantastic week-long workshop Ish led.
Oct. 27-28, 1990, Gallery 2, Chicago.

Cabaret Night at the Sanitarium Carnerosa
Wrote and directed group performance evening, a mostly lip-synch performance musical of Marc Almond songs. The premise was a talent show put on by a group of mental patients in an art therapy program who all believed they were living in Spain. we got the audience drunk first. I think there was meat juggling and erotic electrocution in the show.
Oct. 19, 1990, Gallery 2:, Chicago.  

Never Forget
One of those awful "I'm a fag and my parents hate me" performances.
Solo for "Personal/Political: Sexuality Self-Defined," Sept. 8, 1990, Gallery 2, Chicago.  

Killer Queens
This was another drag street theatre group created for anti-violence marches and demos.  We dressed in slinky black dresses, black sunglasses, wide-brimmed black hats and brandished space laser guns, kicking up our heels and bashing back. Imagine the Guardian Angels headed up by Jackie O and Emma Peel. We wanted to show that queer self-defense didn't necessitate a masculine, militaristic model.

Give Me Yours
Collaboration with violinist Tom Murray.
WhiteWalls Magazine Benefit, June 14, 1990, Club Lower Links, Chicago.

Sanitarium Carnerosa Field Trips
Early excerpts presented as collaborations with Selene Kallas-Fitzpatrick, a warm-up for the full-length Carnerosa, which included my ex-girlfriend shaving my legs while I was tied up.
For "Gurlene & Gurlette’s Rodeo Against AIDS" June 2, 1990, Club Lower Links, Chicago. 

H.E.L.M.S. Angels
This was a street theatre drag group friends and I  made to protest Sen. Jesse Helms' attacks on arts funding, placard-waving Charlie's Angels artiste activists. The name stood for "Hateful, Evil, Loud, Menacing Sissies."

Romantic/Sexual Agenda for 092989
This  was based on a seduction outline I made before a party, then the notes I made during the party and beyond, as I hit on different guys and eventually got laid. A decade later a version of this would show up in Lawrence Schimel's anthology Boy Meets Boy.
Solo for OUT Visions, May 16, 1990, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Instructions
This was part of a whole weekend of events around a big national healthcare demo ACT-UP organized. I also worked the runway for Stiff Sheet's "Fabulous Fascist Fashion Show" modeling the Activist Caftan — a giant Silence = Death triangle.
Solo for Stiff Sheets & ACT-UP's Artists Against AIDS demonstration, April 21, 1990, Cook County Hospital, Chicago.

Performance 001
After recently breaking up, my ex-boyfriend and I documented 24 hours we spent together, taking multiple photographs and making audiotape diary entries every hour on the hour. The results were compiled into an installation.
24-hr. analysis/documentation of June 24, 1989, collaboration with Robert Herries, various locations, Chicago. 

Walking Through Destiny's Plaything
Written and directed by David Sedaris. This was a hilarious play we did back before David was a superstar, but we all knew he would be some day. When he asked me to fill in for his sister, I jumped at the chance. (Yes, for one night I was Amy Sedaris! And I had something to say!) The play was about Joyce Carol Oates trying to cover up how her books had been ghostwritten by gameshow host Gene Rayburn, and this also involved Liz Taylor somehow.
April 19, 1989, Links Hall, Chicago. 

Revolutionary Suicide
My first-ever performance outside of school! Drunks threw things and yelled for me to die!
Group performance for "Art and Stuff", March 6, 1988,  Avalon Nightclub, Chicago.