WINNER OF THE 2009 ETHYL EICHELBERGER AWARD
"A performance artist of underground legend." - Guy Trebay, New York Times
A performance piece that re-examines the heyday of 1970s American daytime television chat and variety programs. Taking the format of legendary talk shows like The Mike Douglas Show and Dinah!, which starred lesbian icon Dinah Shore. Ms Davis isn't interested in assimilating into the mainstream entertainment complex, but instead wishes to dissect a kind of TV staple and reconfigure it by presenting an array of live and Skype guests from the various worlds of literature, dance, theatre, film and art she has intersected in her over 30 year career as a performance and live artist, writer and cultural raconteur. With guest hosts, Downtown treasure Carmelita Tropicana, and Jennifer Miller the famed bearded lady of Circus Amok expect ten days of the unexpected, the unusual and the sublime.
The show begins with some deep breathing and a poem read by the guest host. With Carmelita Tropicana, the poem is in Spanish and with Jennifer Miller the poem is in English. The poem invokes Supreme Court Justice Sonja Santo-Meyer. Which ever of the two guest hosts is present, she is the lesbian lover of Vaginal Davis.
Ten days of performances and I attended 3 shows and enjoyed lots of lesbian affirmation. Opening discussions invoke lesbian relationship processing, the lesbiana Clintons, and all the multitudes of lesbians in high office. And the audience was certainly full of dykes.
Jennifer Miller and Dr. Davis sang together, “you are my lady, my bearded lady” to the tune of You are My Sunshine. Between verses there was some comedic dialog, songs interspersed with jokes like the Smothers Brothers or other classic comedy teams.
On each side of the stage were computers, projectors and the chat roulette kids. All present to be objectified in nothing but slightly ill-fitting white briefs. I was surprised people in the audience were actually watching the projected chat roulette at all, even when the occasional wanker cropped up. On closing night the chat roulette kids got a lot more frisky, made out and groped each other a whole lot more. Perhaps Dr. Davis was too free with the praise, however, since some of them seemed quite self-satisfied. It all worked out for the best when she skillfully referenced and simultaneously deflated colonialism by describing one of the chat roulette kid’s penis as “the most beautiful and well-formed in all of Christendom.”
Next come Dr. Davis’s musings on the desire to bring a man into her lesbian relationship. Chat roulette kids set upon the audience to find a man. Man is put on pedestal and admired... for his Bubble Butt. Bubble Butt. Bubble. Butt. Man-worship and a little bonus shrimping!
Musical interlude. Yes! Reluctant Dr. Davis will sing one or both of her original, brilliant, subversive and highly dance-able songs: My Pussy is a Cactus and Tom Cruise Loves Women.
Tom Cruise Loves Women is an old favorite. I first heard it during Vaginal Davis’s visit to NYC in 2006 where I stalked her for the whole week from a boutique reception to NYU to her Brick Tops party. She performed Tom Cruise Loves Women in an NYU lecture hall. This time, the music video for this song was projected in triplicate on the giant screen that made up the backdrop of the set. Fantastic images of Tom Cruise comprise frenzy of homoerotic imagery. Mesmerizing images multiply across the screens, the one where he is in his briefs from Risky Business really stands out. But like the song says... Tom Cruise Loves Women.
My Pussy is a Cactus is a new favorite. “My pussy is dry. And fidgety.”
The show includes gossip, guests, performances and Skype projections loom large on the backdrop/screen of the set.
Saturday night guests and performances included Julie Tolentino with Pigpen. Julie Tolentino’s head and face wrapped in rope, she is lying on the floor motionless until her part of the performance. Pigpen is off to the side, holding the rope, unwrapping her, maybe providing a lifeline. Rope marks are visible on her face afterwards.
Announcement: There is a car with license plate “Sloppy Bottom,” please move your car or it will be towed. (But who drives in New York? Is this leftover Los Angeles wit? An old school variety show interlude? Is there a doctor in the house?)
Sunday night guests included MEN, dressed in gray, tied together, perform their amazing, perfectly danceable and uplifting song, Who am I to be so free?
Jose Munoz read a poem.
Casey Spooner unwittingly wandered close to a smack down from MEN's own Emily Roysden, with his blundering remarks about global politics tempting her to read him like a comic strip. Not sure if anyone else noticed this tension but it was quickly dispersed, partly by Mickey Boardman’s tired shtick about being a faggot with a distaste for women’s bodies. No one is buying that old line in this audience, please!
Marc Siegel interviewed over Skype from Berlin. I love how he showed some of Vaginal Davis’s old zines, holding them up to the camera for all to see. Treasures!
Many, many lesbian references through out the run of shows, including but not limited to references to several dykes as being a “proper butch.” Sooo respectful! Vaginal Davis is a real Barracuda Femme Top, as she duly noted herself.
Lesbianic hystrionics!
Hill and Billary, Elena Kegel, Janet Reno.
(It all proves the currently well-known fact that dykes and dyke culture are hot.)
Dance break.
Beauty treatment: Sit on my facial. Butt-tox. One of the chat roulette boys provides the juices of a teenage butt to reduce wrinkles and restore youth to our host.
End with human dessert, consisting of whip cream on saran wrap on a chat roulette kid.
Third round of SftD and there was a torrential downpour of rain an hour before show time. I was walking around the East Village and decided just to hang out in the theater since I was early. PS 122, like the name suggests, is a converted school and there was a ratty couch in the hallway perfect for my wait. Thinking about how the only thing missing from this chat show is the actual broadcast. The title projections and theme music are perfect. Vaginal Davis is here as the recipient of an award, yet she is putting on a show of all these other performers, academics and culture makers... featuring countless others... in receiving her Ethyl Eichelberger award she is highlighting the world of queer and outsider multimedia and performance art, a world where she is a major contributor and connected to all her guests, many with a history of years of collaboration. She is placing herself in the center of a loosely formed culture of subversive queer art, and by doing so, perpetuating and furthering the existence of that very culture of subversive queer art.
Why of course there is a radical queer community! Can’t you see how we are all connected at the hub of Speaking from the Diaphragm?
I wish she had Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch as guests. According to an interview in Butt Magazine, Ryan Trecartin loves lesbians, not that you couldn’t figure that out by watching his films. But I digress, and in fact there aren’t many other guests I could wish for, other than of course Vag’s long-time friend and collaborator Ron Athey. LA gave birth to some seriously powerful movers of queer culture! I don’t even remember when I first heard of Vaginal Davis, I think she has always been part of my world... Now that can’t be completely true, but I am fairly sure I already knew about her when I first saw Hustler White.
The run of this show was a sub-cultural showcase, panorama and extravaganza. All the fabulous musicians, artists, academics and outsiders were enriched and put into context through the so-called German Kindergarten Occultist set and through Dr. Davis’s personal reminiscence with them.
Suzanne Sachsse announced The Jewish Polish Renaissance over Skype and the conversation was all about loving new movements. Let me show you my manifesto! Vaginal Davis decreed: Every 15 minutes you have to create a new movement.
Like any other guest, Joanna Fateman's tiny daughter Goldie was offered some of the official SftD drink, Anal Wartese, which looked a lot like cheap vodka and cranberry.
Fashion designer Marcus Pontello changed outfits three times for us via Skype.
Miho Hatori, the singer from Cibo Mato was amazing, loud, rambunctious, defiant and fun music! Everyone danced.
And one final, important piece of gossip to take away from closing night:
Brian Austin Green is a premature ejaculator.
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