Antony Hegarty was on Fresh Air today with a lovely interview.

Listen here.

And even better, Antony performing Crazy in Love.

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Rhubarb Festival opens this weekend in Toronto, presented by Buddies in Bad Times – Toronto’s oldest queer theater. I did a quick 5-questions with Rhubarb’s delicious Festival Director Erika Hennebury.

JH: Rhubarb is turning 30 this year. All the thirty-year-olds I know are pissed at baby-boomers and terrified by millenials. How does Rhubarb festival locate itself between these generations?

EH: Rhubarb is in bed with both generations, as I see it. As a child of baby-boomers, Rhubarb has that whole Oedipus thing going on. I think sex and destruction best define the aesthetic of the festival. We want to destroy our parents’ generation and all its complacency but we still have a big thing for Mommy (in this case, Sky Gilbert). As for me – I am Gen Xer and so, unlike the millenials (as cute as they are), my love of flannel plaid shirts is in no way retro-ironic and I can’t type worth shit.

JH: Why is it called the Rhubarb festival?

EH: According to Franco Boni’s book Rhubarb-o-rama, the name can be derived from Sky Gilbert, Jerry Ciccoritti, Matt Walsh, Fabian Boutillier and some other co-founding artists. They were sitting around trying to come up with a name for the festival. Sky suggested New Faces of ’79, which was pretty much instantly shot down. They were all really into surrealism at the time so they started naming random fruits and vegetables and Rhubarb seemed to stick. The festival was then named Rhubarb! Rhubarb!, later shortened to Rhubarb!. A few years ago we decided to nix the exclamation mark and here we are. Rhubarb. It’s like how in big crowd scenes in the movies they instruct the extras to just keep saying ‘rhubarb’ over and over again if they can’t think of anything else to say. So you have this underpaid crowd of random people, who aren’t good looking enough to be movie stars, saying ‘rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb’ over and over again as background for the ‘beautiful people’. What a totally surreal and horrifying metaphor for real life. But to me, those extras seem much more interesting to me than Brangelina, you know? I suppose that is my interpretation

JH: Your festival has some fab national and international programming. Who should we be watching in 2009 from Toronto?

EH: This year we are presenting a few touring pieces I am very excited about. Taylor Mac is here from New York for 4 nights only on his way across Canada. As a company that aims to present contemporary queer work that is pro-sexual, political and challenging, I can’t think of a better fit than Taylor. We are also extremely lucky to have Ame Henderson’s company, Public Recordings, showing /Dance/Songs/ for all of Week Three of Rhubarb, plus a special one night presentation of Matija Ferlin’s Sad Sam (revisited), which is one of my favourite pieces I’ve seen in the past year. I’m also excited about Amos Latteier’s new lecture performance A History of the Cage and Sweet Ecstasy, by Don Simmons who usually works in performance art. They are both artists to watch who are working in new hybrids of performance theatre and public lecture.

JH: Buddies in Bad Times has been producing queer work for 30 years. Do you see this role shifting away from topics based in identity-politics?

EH: Buddies redefinition of ‘queer’ was expanded in our revised mandate to include both ‘LGBT’ and ‘outside the mainstream’. So, on the one hand, yes, we are moving away from producing topical text-based narrative plays about the lives of LGBT people. On the other hand I feel that queers will never get away from identity-politics in performance. Transgression, performance and identity are a part of our every day lives. The solo literary tradition of playwriting is a marginal aspect of queer performance-making. Because playwriting is perceived as a more ‘legitimate’ and because it is currently a more rewarded artistic pursuit it can result in a system which alienates queer identities, censors sexuality and imposes a binary interpretation of gender. Queers often perform in bars, in galleries, in basements, in cabarets and in public spaces. It’s crucial that Buddies continues to defend a space where these artists are encouraged and granted access to the means of artistic production and development.

JH: Do you have any delicious rhubarb recipes you’d like to share?

EH: My mom used to grow it in the backyard. The best is when you dip the raw stalk in sugar. A little sweet, a little tart and right out of the ground with the dirt still on it, eh?

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Franko B. and my friend Tobaron have work in this show. Go check it out.

Darkrooms-Homme Made

curated by Avi Feldman

January 15 – February 21, 2009

reception: January 15, 6-8 PM 

Franko B, Amir Fattal, Carl Hopgood, Shiro Masuyama, Michal Moskop, Yochai Matos, Dean Sameshima, Kyle Trowbridge, Naama Tsabar, Tobaron Waxman

DANEYAL MAHMOOD GALLERY

511 WEST 25 ST, 3FL 

NEW YORK CITY 10001

phone: 212 675 2966

Tues.-Sat. 11am to 6pm

The exhibition explores vulnerability and means of communication in a volatile digitalized world through the prism of a darkroom. The term darkroom is most commonly associated with a workplace in which film and photographic paper are developed to make photographic prints. Nevertheless, the same term is also used to describe a darkened room, sometimes located in a nightclub, bathhouse, or sex club, (aka backroom) where sexual activity takes place. 

Darkrooms are losing their relevance in our digital times, when sex and image producing can be found and made easily through the Internet and simple and popular electronic devices. Chat rooms and digital cameras – omnipresent in mobile phones – are providing almost everyone in the western world a chance to have quick and easy sex just as it allows the possibility to make quick and easy pictures and films.

While the effects of employing digital means for sex – and for art – is yet to be fully understood, the current exhibition offers an intimate peek into the work of a young generation of artists, mostly men, giving account of themselves and their surroundings, even when it seems at first gloomy, self-centered or overly narrow. Vulnerability, obsession and sexuality are reconstructed and perceived from the hidden, voyeuristic and secluded area of a darkroom, prompting reflection and a second look at what many would consider indecent. It calls upon an investigation of the darkroom as a structure that is private and lonely while being also a space for experimentation, communication and intimacy…..

OH and in a related news item, this just in from Senegal:

Nine men were handed harsh sentences of eight years in prison after being tried on charges of conspiracy and “unnatural acts,” a term used to criminalize homosexuality, according to their lawyers and gay rights groups here on Thursday.

Read the rest in the NY TIMES.

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Photo by Paula Court,

On entering The Kitchen this Saturday, I was curious to see how Radiohole had dealt with Chelsea’s sizable performance space for the staging of ANGER/NATION, their latest production. The company usually performs at the Collapsable Hole, a theater made from two neighboring garages in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and a space they share with fellow experimental theater company Collapsable Giraffe. The Collapsable Hole is cozy and a little claustrophobic. There are no chairs, just large steps with movable pillows, which do not seat more than fifty people. Watching Radiohole in their own performance space is raw and intimate, their ultra technological sets making it feel as though you just entered a post-apocalyptic underground world: red lights, monitors every where, exposed bricks, and familiar objects used for unfamiliar purposes. It was difficult to imagine their work in the clean and fashionable Chelsea space.

Yet for their performance at The Kitchen , Radiohole successfully recreated that sense of intimacy and technological overload by using only about a third of the stage’s depth, and building a fiberglass firework-like structure that bursts towards the audience, mini monitors attached to the end of each rod, physically breaking the imaginary fourth wall between audience and stage. In this production, a large, bluish-grey, cardboard moon hangs above stage right, and the set is dissected through the middle by a ramp that ascends to a darkened backstage. Horizontal, color-changing panels act as a back drop, while on the sides and the front of the stage are visible various light and sound switches: Radiohole members usually operate all the cues in their performances.

ANGER/NATION’s set alone is like a sculpture, and could survive as an installation even when not inhabited by its performers. It is a little like a space ship, filled with light switches and monitors, almost breathing, with its changing colors and tiny movements. Yet the performers are there, all the way from the beginning: pouring beer for the audience, talking to each other, attempting drunken speeches, some of them wearing adjusted German folk dresses complete with embroidered edelweiss. For this show, Radiohole has centered around the historical character of Mrs. Carrie A. Nation (Maggie Hoffman), the “Bar Room Smasher” born in “Garrard County, Kentucky” in 1846. After loosing her husband to drinking and sailors, Mrs. Nation takes on the quest of cleansing America of “sin and degradation” by destroying every bar she sets foot in. Like in other Radiohole productions, narrative is non-linear, and Mrs. Nation’s story appears at intervals between songs, disturbing tableaux, and violent repetitive acts, as when two of the men on stage repeatedly shoot each other’s buttocks with air guns.

About half way through the performance, pink American flags make their appearance on the background monitors, and Mrs. Nation declares that all will participate in her crusade: more specifically “if they are women, they will join [her], and if they are boys, they will follow [her] unwillingly”. Mrs. Nation’s crusade, with its conservative thrust and Born-Again Christian overtones, brings to mind the real world, and at one time Miss Alaska runner-up, Governor Sarah Palin. In fact, Radiohole’s emphasis on questions of gender and sexuality, as well as their dissection of religious zealotism, could not come at a more salient time in the history of American politics.

Mrs. Nation’s crusade eventually takes on an unexpected turn, and the pregnant actress finally appears to us in a radically different attire from the widow like costume in which she first descends onto the stage. The conclusion of the performance is at once surprising and thought-provoking: disclosing it would decrease its efficacy.

ANGER/NATION deals with sex, alcohol, queerness and decadence, with great irony and without sparing the macabre and the gruesome. Filled with chauvinistic jokes, beer smashing, and unexpected props, such as the prehensile penis on actor Eric Dyer, ANGER/NATION is a visceral experience, often overwhelming, sometimes digressive, and always provocative and challenging. Radiohole’s latest production proves once again their unique position as a company on the cutting edge of performance, one taking risks and, on this occasion, breathing fresh air into the now fashionable Chelsea district. There is no one like them in New York.

Radiohole: ANGER/NATION

The Kitchen

September 24-27, 8pm

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A red velvet curtain slowly opens…to reveal a dark hanging curtain. After a few moments, this layer peels off as well, onto a screen of faux leopard skin. The audience laughs. We are so close to the stage and the small theater makes me hungry for more space. Every time the curtain lifts, I hope it will open up to the stage. Yet even when the leopard skin unfolds, another layer of sheer material divides the performance space from the audience. The suspense created by the peeling of all these layers is repeated in the long wait before Joey Arias, the drag star of “Arias With a Twist“, actually appears on stage. The audience is teased, our gaze at once disappointed and pleased with the repeated delay of satisfaction. We are here to see Arias, we want her, want to hear and see her performance. After all, the reviews have been raving about the show, and Here Arts has decided to extend the performance (originally planned as a four week run between June and July) all the way to December 31.

Finally Arias appears, and what ensues is a series of acts, reminiscent of a cabaret/circus hybrid, full of sex, sensuality, humor and song. And although we might be here to see Arias, Arias is not alone. She has been surrounded by the playful creations of Basil Twist, a third generation puppeteer whose imaginative use of scale, style and color well complements Arias’ performance. Simultaneously loud and intimate, “Arias With a Twist” relies on the talent of Arias and Twist to create a series of scenes loosely tied together by an intricate plot. After being abducted by aliens, Arias is dropped back on earth, where she embarks on a search for a mythical prophet. Arias’ search begins when she takes a bite off of a magic mushroom, and from here on the performance exists on the edge of hallucination. So Arias floats across the stage, while large white hands caress her and eventually dive fingers first into her vagina; she goes to hell and dances with her “boys”, two devils (puppets) endowed with ridiculously large phalluses; and finally, she reaches New York City, where she walks across Manhattan from neighborhood to neighborhood like a human Godzilla in search for a cab.

The hallucinatory quality of the performance ends in the last part of the show, when Arias returns to us as a more classic drag diva in performance. In her closing acts, Arias sings, tap dances while flossing her teeth, and finally appears on a large rotating wedding cake decorated with legs in stockings. Twists’ puppets keep her company until the end, contrasting and complementing Arias’ human presence. These performing objects work both as extensions and amplifiers of Arias’ performance, and as reminders of Arias’ uniqueness (and loneliness, as suggested by Arias’ rendition of the pop classic “All By Myself”).

In a world of puppets and play, Arias is both the human exception and the driving force behind the performance, her audacity and flaunting of all matters sex related both provocative and exhilarating. Arias’ performance pushes the boundaries of the small theater at Here Arts Center, making the space feel too tight for her masterful singing and explosive sexuality. At the same time, there is something powerful about the containment of Arias’ performance, a reminder of the contemporary political and social circumstances, not as willing to play with Arias as the spectators in the audience. Hopefully, someday Arias won’t be “all by [her] self” on the stage, a strange specimen of the human species studied by aliens from another world, and work like “Arias With a Twist” will abound outside New York City’s performance scene.

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Just in case you think we’re gettin’ a little too artsy fartsy around here, we’re going to plug (heh-heh) the upcoming show Peg-Ass-Us. Never seen it, know nothing about it, but dang ya gotta give these kids credit for pure pervy-ness!

Peg-Ass-Us

Performed and Created by John Leo & Sophie Nimmannit

A Production of Pack of Others

Dates: July 10th, 11th & 12th at 8 PM

Location: HOT! Festival at Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, NYC

Tickets: $15 ($12 student/senior)

(212) 219-0736 or dixonplace.org

Peg–Ass–Us: Queer Sex For Straight People?

Peg–Ass–Us is a theatrical burlesque all about “pegging,” the sexual act where a woman wearing a strap-on dildo penetrates a man’s anus. A charming duo, Sophie and John (portrayed by co-creators and real-life couple Sophie Nimmannit and John Leo) set out to spread the word about the pleasures of prostate stimulation and strap-on sex. Their headlong dive starts with the facts, but once in the deep end, their personal differences play tug-of-war with the lesson plan, pulling sex from silly to serious, between kink and dignity, and wrangling over issues of gender, sexual identity and personal desires. Armed with original songs (accompanied by banjo-uke and glockenspiel), dance, puppetry, drag, physical comedy and audience participation, the two lovers turn their bedroom and hearts inside out for the world to see. And take off their clothes.

The term “pegging” was coined in 2001 when Dan Savage, author of the popular sex advice column “Savage Love,” found that he was receiving a sufficient number of questions on this subject to warrant finding a name for it, and held a reader-based competition. The subject was recently featured in the Village Voice article “Pegging Goes Big: Straight Men Get It In the End” (June 17, 2008.)

Peg–Ass–Us is part of the HOT! Festival, Dixon Place’s 17th Annual Celebration of Queer Culture. The show premiered at the 2008 Montreal Fringe Festival in June and the fringe website buzzed with audience enthusiasm: “Kind of like the sex ed you wish you’d had in high school!” “Hilarious, totally shameless in a good way.” “An awesome exploration of how it feels to prefer sexual activities that are perceived to be outside of the norm.” In September, the show will travel to the San Francisco Fringe Festival, where it will be hosted by the Center for Sex and Culture (directed by Dr. Carol Queen, who starred in the “wildly successful” 1998 film Bend Over Boyfriend.) Pack of Others’ first show FLUID, a personal exploration of “bisexuality,” by founding member Erika Kate MacDonald, toured to Minneapolis, Boulder, NYC, and Portland last year.

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Its June and that means there’s lots of queertastic entertainment coming your way. For instance:

Neil Greenberg’s ” Really Queer Dance with Harps and Quartet with Three Gay Men”

June 11-14, 18-21 at 7:30pm

$25/$15(Discount) at Dance Theater Workshop

http://www.dancetheaterworkshop.org/greenberg

And also the HOT FEST at Dixon Place! Woo-hoo!!

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Despite the post-Reagan revisionist history, the 60′s were, in fact,  a time of enormous changed. In San Francisco, especially, the Hippies and/or Freaks or what-have-you lived collectively, had a thriving barter economy and were, in their own drug-addled naive way, trying to be in the world in a different, revolutionary and transformative way. Almost no group from that era exemplifies this passionate, playful, imaginative revolutionary spirit more than The Cockettes. If you haven’t seen David Weissman and Bill Weber’s amazing documentary, you should. And if you’d like to see the surviving Cockettes live and in the flesh, you need go no further than the LGBT Center on Thursday, June 5.

A Cockette Symposium

Thursday, June 5.  7:30 – 9 p.m.

LGBT Center, 208 West 13th Street, Kaplan Assembly, First Floor

Admission:  FREE, no reservations required.

Join the largest New York gathering of Cockettes since their  theatrical catastrophe at the Anderson Theater in 1971.  In 1968 this  psychedelic-fueled gender bending troupe of  men, women, children,

gay, straight and in-between became legendary for their performances at San Francisco’s Palace Theater.  At the cultural forefront of gay liberation, these bearded hippie drag queens showed generations to come the creative potential within us all.  Moderated by Steven Watson, chronicler of the American avant-garde and author of Factory Made, The Beat Generation and The Harlem Renaissance, and hosted by John Waters’ superstar Mink Stole and HRH Lee Mentley of the Hula Palace, the evening promises to be historic.  Cockettes scheduled to appear include Scrumbly, Sweet Pam, Rumi, Fayette, Harlow, Jet, Tahara, Sebastian, Toots Taraval, Jim Campbell and Dolores DeLuce.

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Alas the WYSIWYG Talent Show, the first all-blogger reading and performance series, is pulling the plug. The final show, “Gays Gone Wild!: Gayer Tales of Gay Gayness” will be on June 13th at Bowery Poetry Club.

WYSIWYG, co-founded by Culturebot’s very own Andy Horwitz in January of 2004, has played host to some notable bloggers including Gawker managing editor Choire Sicha, monologist Mike Daisey, Gothamist’s Jen Chung and Ultragrrrl Sarah Lewitinn, among many, many other blogebrities.

What to expect for the final show? We turn to the WYSIWYG blog, naturally, for the answer:

Unfortunately, all good things do come to an end. To celebrate The WYSIWYG Talent Show’s farewell show, we will make tribute to all things Dorothy in honor of Gay Pride Month with “Gays Gone Wild!: Gayer Tales of Gay Gayness” on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at The Bowery Poetry Club.

This will be the official farewell show for WYSIWYG as we wrap up three and a half years of the first all-blogger reading series in New York City. We laughed, we cried, we wet our pants, all in the pursuit of hilarity, performance and potty jokes. Our final homage to the talented bloggers who have graced our stage this year will feature a gaggle of gay readings from the queerest of the queer, be they gay, lesbian, straight, trans, bi or robot bloggers. So get your chaps on and gussy up your Subaru Outbacks because this will definitely be the best and bumpiest ride you’ve ever been on.

So, pour one out for the scrappy reading series that got bloggers away from their laptops and onto the stage. It will be missed.

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Check out this excerpt from Tim Miller’s 1001 beds as performed at PS122 on YouTube:

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