Performance Art

October 15, 2011January 5, 2012

My God Is Better Than Your God

I normally attack theater from the review flank. I use my insight to take you, the possible audience member, into the “reality” of what a theatrical event may be like – without you having to actually be part of the reality. I try to express the theatricity of a theatrical event through the written word. It is my job – to bring the entire experience of sitting in a theater, marveling at what is taking place on stage, the smells of the greasepaint and the dinner that is stuck to the lapel of the patron next to you – without your ever having to enter a theater. Although entering a theater to see a play is always best!

And here is why… I’ve just returned from a performance of My God Is Better Than Your God by theater great Gina Grass. Once again, it is a one woman show.Normally, I would just review the show, but there was a moment when everything came together for me, as it will for you. As it will for anyone who ever lived to see theater. For anyone who has ever lived!

Here is a snippet from My God Is Better Than Your God, now playing at the Manka Open Mike in Tribeca.

Gina: You can’t possibly imagine my God. Your mind is too small. Imagine a goat trying to drive the Batmobile. Trying to drive the Batmobile with cooking mitts. That is you – stupidly in front of my God. Only more stupid. My God would laugh at you but h/she/it is above laughter. My God is always in a state of laughter because my God is always in a state of ALL. Eons ago, my God would have bathed in the lamentations of your women and children. That was before my God evolved to a point that evolution now means nothing to he/she/it. No, back then, my God would have taken a hoof (for my God only needed ONE HOOF!) and smashed that hoof on your pathetic being. And the bodies of the weak – like the previously mentioned women and children. And to make you feel even smaller than you already would be feeling – my God would rip the viscera from the chest cavities of those you loved in front of your pathetic face. And my God would use their intestines like a gore-drenched and dread sippy straw… and my God would suck and suck and suck the life out of everything you held dear. And then, for spite, my God would spit that life right back into your face. You turn pale. I haven’t really started. Then my God would smash YOU with the HOOF! And you would be dispersed into fragments no bigger than an atom. And even your smartest atom would kneel before my God in much the same way that a lichen kneels before you – if a lichen could kneel – BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I’M F-ING TALKING ABOUT! I see you. You are trying to comprehend my God. But you are like the contents of a Petrie dish trying to comprehend the scientist. The only difference is that the contents of the Petrie dish do not know to be afraid. And you should be SO afraid. Because my God no longer needs a hoof…

I have never heard the like on a stage before in my life. I could only imagine saying these beautiful words to someone who has cut me off in traffic, or to my landlord when he implies that my sub-lease may be invalid. In what situation would you use these words? And what would you do with your HOOF?!?

Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium

January 12, 2011April 27, 2011

An Apology From Behind The Proscenium

This is an apology. An online mea culpa. I take the proverbial cat o’nine tails and self flagellate. This is an open apology to the great Zenobia Lassiter.

Last week, I posted an interview and diatribe against her brilliant new work, Pussy. Yes, I said brilliant. I’ve not had time to process what I saw on stage.

I saw her put a fish in her “V” word and felt its power.

I saw her put on a Hitler mustache and read excerpts from Mao’s Little Red Book and now understand what it is to be forced to work retail in a strip mall.

I now know that as I listened to her describe her last colonoscopy that she was in fact talking about our need to vote on a regular basis if we ever hope to sustain democracy.

I had to nerve to say that performance art is neither! I was a Philistine. An ignorant man, who although he lives in a metropolis, has the mind of a plastic suburbanite. If I could find a way to spit on myself, I would.

So, dear Zenobia, here is what I have to say: I couldn’t possibly be more sorry. You are a genius. You are a colossus, and we peep about your feet like insects (I paraphrase my Shakespeare, but you know what I mean).

Zenobia, can you ever forgive me? Will you ever allow me to speak to you again, to sit in your angelic presence and absorb your unabashed brilliance? To be a mortal in the aura of a goddess? Please? Pretty please?

Ha!

The day that I apologize to the likes of you is the day that I buy season tickets to the barbaric New Jersey Devils and their hyper-man-beast NHL. YOU MAKE ME SICK!

Faithful readers, I hope you had a little chortle at my innocent prank.

In a week or so, I will be interviewing some of the artistic minds involved with the Manka Center Stage World Premiere of Tennessee Williams’ lost classic Haunted Alligators. You can see the 1960 film version all this month on Manka Classic Movies.

Yours In Art,
Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium

January 5, 2011April 27, 2011

I remember living in the “80s”.

It was the time of Wham! and Careless Whisper.

It was the time of Broadway’s Les Miserables and Big River.

Sadly, it was also the time of Ronald Reagan and Jerry Fallwell and his “Moral Majority”. The reason I bring any of this up is the reminder of the ghastly “Moral Majority”. Why? Because in my circle of theater aficionados we had a saying – “The Moral Majority is neither”. Neither “moral” nor “majority.” What is the relevance? It is this; today I’m going to talk to a performance artist.

I must admit that I have no idea what performance art is supposed to be. But I do know this; performance art is neither. Neither “performance” nor “art.”

Earlier in the week I had the misfortune to be invited by a (no longer) friend to a “show” by noted “artist” Zenobia Lassiter. The “show” was called Pussy. I thought it might be about cats (I love my kitties, they are adorable), but I was horribly wrong. I talked to Lassiter after the “show.”

Kyrle Lendhoffer: I don’t know what to say…

Zenobia Lassiter: There is no correct response. When everything is deconstructed to its most base level, there is really nothing left to say.

KL: No, that’s not it. At times I thought I was going to be sick. You call that “theater”?

ZL: Of course I do. It’s the only kind of theater that matters. Think about what made you sick.

KL: All right, I’m thinking about it. Oh, god…

ZL: And it makes you sick again! My work has power! You will remember this forever! You can’t say the same about Rent.

KL: I thought Rent was very powerful. And I’ll remember it forever because it was INCREDIBLE. Because it had artistic integrity. Because it had a beginning, middle and end.

ZL: Those things are over rated. You long for the theater of your grandfather. I’m giving you the theater of your unborn great grandson.

We bickered for a moment about whether or not I’d have a great grandson and how that really mattered in the grand scheme of things.

KL: Zenobia, what the hell was your piece about?

ZL: You tell me, Mr. Lendhoffer. What did you think it was about?

KL: (thinking for a few moments) I think you were trying to explore your own sexuality and the tenuous relationship between man and woman. I think.

ZL: Wrong! Try again.

KL: Really? I mean, it must have had something to do with your sexuality in some way. There is no way that it wasn’t.

ZL: You’re not setting your mind free. Why would you say something like that?

KL: Well, that thing with the fish.

ZL: What about the fish?

KL: Madam, you put a fish into your vagina. How the hell does that not relate to your sexuality in some way?

ZL: Your mind is trapped. Ossified by the world. Let me help you out.

KL: Oh, please do.

ZL: My piece was a scathing indictment of our consumer culture. It’s about everything that is wrong with the media turning us into “sheeple”, making us follow every fad, making us buy every product, making us into automatons that will buy everything – from Coke Zero to the war in Iraq.

KL: Putting a fish in your vagina is an indictment of the war in Iraq? You have got to be kidding me!

ZL: Fool! The fish represented Big Media’s message! We were my vagina. You, me, everyone! The message was being crammed down our throat. Our collective throat was my vagina! It’s so obvious!

KL: Ms. Lassiter, I am NOT your vagina! I will never BE your vagina!

ZL: It’s too late, Mr. Lendhoffer. You are already my vagina.

KL: Can we stop using the “V” word? I’m getting sick again.

ZL: Your sickness is your subconscious mind actually getting my show. Deep down inside you know what I’m saying and you agree with it. Admit it.

KL: I will admit nothing of the sort. You have problems.

ZL: Oh, really…

KL: Yes! And I find it insulting that I had to watch you go through your own psychotherapy on stage. See a psychiatrist! Get some help! But in private! Theater goers do not want to see you solve your psychosis – especially when they have to pay for it!

ZL: Let’s hear you say that when I win another “Obie.”

KL: Good God…

With that I got up and ran from the room.

What is theater becoming? It’s bad enough when I have to sit through “monologists” like Spalding Gray (may he rest in peace) and Eric Bogosian. But now I have to watch a woman put a fish into her “V” and be impressed? It’s only impressive when it’s part of a show for sailors in Tijuana. Someday – someday in a more beautiful future I’ll be able to put this “show” out of my mind.

Performance art? Get real! Performance art is neither.

Kyrle Lendhoffer – Behind The Proscenium