(from Annie Sprinkle:)
Ahh, memories. Or should I say mammaries?
Yes, Frank and Linda took NYC by storm.
One correction, Karen was already very well known before I got into doing performance art.
YOU (Frank and Linda) and company would stay in my manhattan apartment when in town. That was fun.
Maybe you can one day post the photos and interview I did of you for some sex magazine. I think it was ADAM mag.
Mondo New York was a fun film.
KEEP IT UP.
Annie
PS-- Beth and I will move back to San Francisco in July, which will be nice. Would love to get to one of your performances soon. I could use a hit.
* * * * *
Annie, I would love if you two come!
I have fond memories sitting around your dining table talking intensely to a parade of interesting people.
We have to search the archives for that Adam interview.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Sunday, March 29, 2009
an interview from the past!
This is the transcript of the video of the interview I did with the N.Y.C. public access channel in 1987 in Annie Sprinkle’s apartment. The video is up at http://www.eroplay.com/intimatetheater/intimate.html. We will link this transcript to that.
This needs a set up. The interview took place the day after the performance we did at The Sixth Sense Galley in the East Village and we had done our first performance at Franklin Furnace the week before. The crew was at the Sixth Sense and did an impromptu interview at the end of the performance as Veronica Vera and I sat nude together. It was a great ending to the three hour performance. But they were not the only film crew filming that performance. The other crew was for the film, MONDO NEW YORK.
I got in that film by a fluke. They were thinking about having Annie in it. She was in my cast for Franklin Furnace. She talked me up to them. They decided to film my performance. I made sure she was in my cast.
They wanted to film my Franklin Furnace piece. But that was a five hour performance with over fifteen people in the cast… A complex ritual. I had experienced big movie crews shooting my OUTRAGEOUS BEAUTY REVUE in the late Seventies and how they change [to put it nicely!] the experience in the ritual. So I did not let them shoot at the Furnace. But we set up another performance at Annie’s friend’s intimate gallery for them to shoot. This was a good call! As we were setting up for the show, the film‘s director and the producer tried to bully Linda into changing things for the film. She just directed them to talk to me. I matched their N.Y.C. energy and had them carefully eating out of my hands. They agreed to no bright lights. But then when the performance started, they blasted the lights, washing out the slides projected upon the nude bodies, not to mention the dreamlike quality of the performance. But after ten minutes they turned off the lights and packed up and left. So the audience settled back for the three hour experience! When you watch that movie, you now know the real story!
Back to the interview. For years I had been pissing off “the art world” by warning that the political correctness pressure put on artists by other artists would invite outside censorship. This was years before Senator Helms targeted us artists for doing “obscene” work. Funny, it was the script of my Franklin Furnace performance that got me on the targeted list. Reporters from a N.Y.C. Moonies’ newspaper got into the Franklin Furnace’s archive looking for sexy hot pieces for their expose on the n. e. a. And they found my script! Not only erotic, not only nudity, but shamanistic! Also funny… In the next room Annie was interviewing Karen Finley for an adult magazine. So in the apartment that afternoon there were three of the original five Helms targeted performance artists. At the time Annie was seeing herself as just an adult star… Even when I predicted that she would become an important performance artist. It would be little more than a year before she would do her first one-person show. Karen was known as an underground artist. But it would take her a couple more years before she would break through to fame. By the way, it was Karen who got me the Franklin Furnace gig.
Well, that is the historical context for this interview. Enjoy!
Linda: To clear up his problem was to stop drinking coffee for a while. He said it wasn’t forever.
Q2: Right. It’s very hard.
Linda: Frank said fine. He just stopped right away. He said I won’t drink it until I get back. So he hasn’t had coffee for a couple of months.
Q2: That’s good. I have a pre-ulcer condition.
Linda: So you don’t drink it at all?
Q2: Well, the last 2 weeks it’s been acting up, ever since we started this video business, and the strain. Going shooting at midnight is not exactly good for your health if you have ‘til 2 or 3 in the morning tapings.
Linda: That’s what it’s been like for us all week.
Q2: Yeah, running around. New York is conducive to a certain unhealthiness.
Frank: Media blitz.
Linda: Yeah, we’re just adjusting to it. It’s just different than what we’re used to. Is this half inch?
Q2: It’s half inch. Everything’s auto on it but we found out the auto functions don’t work so well.
Linda: Why’s it so big?
Q2: For stability. We could’ve gotten one of the smaller ones but they don’t…this can go on the shoulder, it can cradle a camera. It’s a little more stable for shooting. It’s also very low light. You can shoot under a candle light, a single candle light. It’s very good and it’s got stereo sound.
Frank: Last night all the lights they put on.
Q2: They didn’t need that. We knew that that would happen and we thought it would upset him.
Linda: He told them no lights. We told them just a slide projector and they said fine, but when the performance started they started putting the lights on. They’re bad.
Q2: Yeah, they are. They’re film people. I’m rolling. You can just talk. We’re just having a party here.
Q: Frank how long have you been in New York
Frank: One week.
Q: And how long are you going to stay? Do you have any more performances?
Frank: No. Tomorrow we leave for Philadelphia for a performance there.
Q: How many performances do you have in Philly?
Frank: One.
Q: Who are you going to stay with in Philadelphia, friends?
Frank: Yes, she’s a friend and she’s also the person that booked us at the gallery there.
Q: Can you tell our viewers about your theory of eroplay? What is eroplay?
Frank: Playing physically but not sexually.
Q: When does it become sexual and how to you keep it from becoming sexual?
Frank: What your intention is, is how you keep it from being sexual?
Q: Is that your intention to keep it from being sexual?
Frank: When I eroplay, yes.
Q: When you eroplay then you eroplay. When you have sex then you have sex.
Frank: Yes.
Q: How do you think eroplay can be helpful to others?
Frank: In a lot of ways, like before people just had sex. If they wanted to be at all physical with another person their only option was to have sex with the person, so they just jammed all their needs for intimacy and play and physicalness into sex even when sex did not satisfy those needs.
Q: Have you ever read a book by Wilhelm Reich called The Function of the Orgasm?
Frank: I have heard about it and read about his theory.
Q: In his book, The Function of the Orgasm, he talks about the orgasm in relation to a bladder. You fill the bladder up and you have tension then you release the bladder and it’s fulfilled and happily satisfying. He got to the point where he said that fascist Italy was a lack of satisfying orgasm. What do you think of those things? He said that if you weren’t satisfied then you had what he called a secondary impulse.
Frank: He was still influenced by Freud so he focused on the sex act.
Q: Rather than play.
Frank: But what he is saying is basically true. Look at Reagan, at what he is going after - any erotic.
Q: He has a lot of missiles.
Linda: What do you mean?
Frank: I mean Meese.
Linda: The anti-obscenity type panels? You’re saying that that kind of oppression, that there’s an oppressiveness coming out of the government from Meese affecting that, trying to repress any kind of release of anything that has to do with erotic or sex or physical stuff.
Q: Have you felt repressed at all in performing your pieces?
Frank: No, but I am waiting.
Q: You’re waiting for someone to come and nail on you.
Q2: Have you seen Paul Cotton? You know Paul Cotton’s performance?
Frank: Yes.
Q2: Paul has been arrested several times. I think they finally gave up. He was so persistent. Paul at Easter would do a performance as an Easter bunny with his genitals exposed and got popped a couple of times in Berkeley I remember.
Frank: We did a performance together.
Q2: Very good! I’d love to see that! What did you do?
Linda: Basically Frank invited Paul to be a guest at Frank’s series at UCB and he told Paul to use Frank as a prop and whatever Paul came up with was ok. So he used Frank as a prop. Paul came in with a costume he had made for Frank which included spaghetti hair and basically not much, just a few strips of things around Frank. He painted Frank’s fingernails and then he held Frank on his lap always dressed as his Easter bunny and they just kind of rocked there together, and Paul had some spiritual kind of speaker talking on a tape recorder.
Q: How do you think being in a wheelchair and not being able to talk has helped or hindered you?
Frank: It is one of my tools.
Q: I was thinking after I saw your performance last night, how would you feel if you came to a performance and you saw what I saw last night. What if you saw a fellow like yourself in a wheelchair, that couldn’t talk, or you saw a person like myself, that can talk and can walk, doing what you did and you were in the audience? What would you think of that?
Frank: I obviously would like it. I would no do it if I did not like it. In fact, I do it partly because no one else is doing it and I want to see it and so I have to do it myself.
Q2: That goes back to “if you want something done then do it yourself”.
Q: And what did you do before this? Why did you think of doing this?
Frank: To be with people, like I took an intensive film course.
Linda: He took an intensive film course and learned how to make movies and then when he was finished with the course he couldn’t afford to make movies. So he did what he called the non films before there was video stuff, and he would have people come over and he would do non films with them. That’s how he got started.
Q: So you liked to be with people. Before that you felt that you weren’t with people? You were alienated or alone?
Q2: You spoke about being a voyeur I remember. I thought that was nice though because I’ve always thought of myself as a voyeur, particularly when I’m behind the camera sometimes.
Frank: Not by choice.
Linda: You were a voyeur not by choice.
Q: How can you be a voyeur not by choice?
Frank: I did not have my board and pointer until I was close to 20.
Q: You had no way to communicate before that?
Linda: He could communicate with his family. They had their system of going through the alphabet which he uses even now at home when he doesn’t have the board and pointer on, but anybody other than his family couldn’t communicate directly to him, and if they wanted to then it had to go through his family, his mother or brother, and that didn’t happen.
Q2: That’s an amazing thing because even though you were a voyeur not by choice, within your body is an incredible person with this mind thinking and seeing and feeling everything that everyone else sees and feels. The difficulty is it might be frustrating to express that for Frank but it’s like one up. It’s all happening and yet you know it’s happening and no one else may know it’s happening.
Frank: It gave me a base so when I finally got into the action…
Linda: You had a lot of ideas about being.
Q: How did you create the board or did your family help you make it?
Frank: When I was 17 I had an idea for the pointer. The board was not the key. It was my pointer that was the breakthrough.
Q: When you communicated with your family, how did you do that before the board?
Frank: But they did not want to let me use a pointer.
Linda: When he was a child they wanted to make him normal and so they tried to get him to walk, they tried to get him to use his fingers to type. So when he was 17 and he had this idea of the pointer to learn to type because he saw that the other stuff wasn’t allowing him to communicate and it was just such a struggle. He didn’t really have any desire to be normal. He was more motivated by wanted to just be able to communicate.
Q: His family didn’t want him to use the pointer?
Frank: The doctors and the therapists were the ones that wanted me to be normal.
Linda: And they were the ones that were kind of encouraging his family to follow in that direction.
Q: If you couldn’t communicate with them then it must have been pretty frustrating for you Frank.
Frank: The school was about to drop me because I wasn’t able to keep up. Finally my teacher made them try the pointer and after 5 minutes I was typing. I should have typed “I told you so”.
Q: Those are the perfect words.
Q2: They thought he was a slow learner.
Q: How do other people communicate in your situation if they don’t use your system? What do they usually do?
Frank: It varies.
Q: None of those other systems of communicating were attractive to you? You didn’t like them? They didn’t work?
Frank: 2 years ago…
Linda: The computer board? 2 years ago the social workers and therapists came up with another idea for
Frank which was a computerized board that would talk and print out on a lighted screen and everything.
Q: Did you try that one?
Linda: Oh yeah.
Frank: Because this is too low tech.
Linda: So everybody spent all this money and bought him this board.
Frank: $5000
Linda: $5000 to get him this electronic board without him having a chance to try it. He tried it on and off for about a month and it was a lot harder. What would happen is that people would…like when you communicate with Frank like this you have to read everything aloud and you tend to guess and try putting it together. But with that board because it had this voice and everything, people would either get fascinated by the electronics and not pay attention to what he was saying, or they would figure they’d just wait until he prints out the whole thing and see it splashed on the screen so they’d stand there and meanwhile he’d have to work to print every single word out rather than having to have them guess.
Frank: And I had to aim.
Linda: And the keys were such that he had to hit them right in the middle so that was really hard.
Q: How did you meet your wife Frank? How did you meet Linda?
Linda: I was working in a travel agency and he came in to get some flight information. The way he tells the story is he looked down my shirt and said “You’d be great in a play I’m doing!”
Q: You were type casting?
Frank: Puff Puff
Linda: Puffing on his cigar. And then we just started hanging out and doing projects together right away.
Q: This was in San Francisco?
Linda: Berkeley. He had just moved to Berkeley.
Q: Where did you live before that Frank?
Frank: New York city.
Q: How long were you in New York?
Frank: For 9 months.
Q: Why did you move back? You didn’t like it?
Frank: I could not get in.
Q: Could not get in where?
Linda: Just get in, like into something that was going on, hooked into something.
Frank: Like here you read about things after they happen.
Linda: So he’d read about something after it happened but he wouldn’t know about it before it happened.
Q: And you feel that in San Francisco, in Berkeley, you are more in?
Frank: Yes. In New York city I did a workshop and 2 performances during that time, but no root.
Linda: Didn’t get rooted.
Q: So, a lot of who you are, your work your play, everything who you are is important for you to be in, be intimate with people.
Frank: Yes.
Q: I think you’re doing a good job at it.
Q2: How is it, you mentioned when I was reading the book about artists like Chris Burden and where do you see yourself in that? You referred to him as the older. Chris has moved onto video. Chris is actually mainstream at this point.
Frank: Head of the department at UCLA.
Q2: Success has gone to his head.
Frank: I am still a rebel, like I am more tied into the young artists.
Q2: Did you see any of the performances early works by Terry Fox in Berkeley at all?
Frank: No.
Q: Have you seen Karen Finlay?
Frank: Yes.
Q: What did you think of that?
Frank: Which time?
Q: The last time? What did you see the last time?
Frank: She is in transition. She now has to deal with fame to make sure fame don’t take her power away. Like before she famous she could focus on the magic, the shock.
Q: Why can’t she do that now?
Frank: They accept everything she does.
Q2: That’s true.
Q: That reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut said. He said something like “In America it’s almost worse than being in a repressive society because anything you do is leveled.” You know if you were to be put in jail or suppressed at least it meant something, but if anything you do is just water off a duck’s back it doesn’t mean anything.
Frank: Yes. That is the plot.
Linda: Frank often refers to the plot that we’re all victims of and also perpetrators of the plot at the same time. It’s the thing that kind of keeps us out of touch with our own power and our own uniqueness and keeps suppressing them in a very tiny little way so you can’t quite put your finger on it.
Q: Do you see that happening to you Frank? I mean since you’ve been in New York people have been interviewing you and filming you.
Frank: They try but I am like Zorro. They can not quite peg me.
Q2: Good. Let’s hope they never do.
Frank: That is my job. Keep it un-pegged so it cannot be muted.
Q: I can’t think of anymore questions. What’s your area code?
Linda: You can tell we’re local. I can just put one on there now. 415
Q2: Thank you Frank.
Q: Do you have anything to say in parting?
Frank: No. It is your job to get me to say something in parting.
Q: I guess there is one question I did forget. What’s your favorite fruit juice?
Frank: You are doing a shitty job of getting me to say something in parting.
Q: You’re not going to tell me what your favorite fruit juice is then?
Frank: For money I will make something up.
Q: Thanks a lot Frank.
L: That was fun!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
This needs a set up. The interview took place the day after the performance we did at The Sixth Sense Galley in the East Village and we had done our first performance at Franklin Furnace the week before. The crew was at the Sixth Sense and did an impromptu interview at the end of the performance as Veronica Vera and I sat nude together. It was a great ending to the three hour performance. But they were not the only film crew filming that performance. The other crew was for the film, MONDO NEW YORK.
I got in that film by a fluke. They were thinking about having Annie in it. She was in my cast for Franklin Furnace. She talked me up to them. They decided to film my performance. I made sure she was in my cast.
They wanted to film my Franklin Furnace piece. But that was a five hour performance with over fifteen people in the cast… A complex ritual. I had experienced big movie crews shooting my OUTRAGEOUS BEAUTY REVUE in the late Seventies and how they change [to put it nicely!] the experience in the ritual. So I did not let them shoot at the Furnace. But we set up another performance at Annie’s friend’s intimate gallery for them to shoot. This was a good call! As we were setting up for the show, the film‘s director and the producer tried to bully Linda into changing things for the film. She just directed them to talk to me. I matched their N.Y.C. energy and had them carefully eating out of my hands. They agreed to no bright lights. But then when the performance started, they blasted the lights, washing out the slides projected upon the nude bodies, not to mention the dreamlike quality of the performance. But after ten minutes they turned off the lights and packed up and left. So the audience settled back for the three hour experience! When you watch that movie, you now know the real story!
Back to the interview. For years I had been pissing off “the art world” by warning that the political correctness pressure put on artists by other artists would invite outside censorship. This was years before Senator Helms targeted us artists for doing “obscene” work. Funny, it was the script of my Franklin Furnace performance that got me on the targeted list. Reporters from a N.Y.C. Moonies’ newspaper got into the Franklin Furnace’s archive looking for sexy hot pieces for their expose on the n. e. a. And they found my script! Not only erotic, not only nudity, but shamanistic! Also funny… In the next room Annie was interviewing Karen Finley for an adult magazine. So in the apartment that afternoon there were three of the original five Helms targeted performance artists. At the time Annie was seeing herself as just an adult star… Even when I predicted that she would become an important performance artist. It would be little more than a year before she would do her first one-person show. Karen was known as an underground artist. But it would take her a couple more years before she would break through to fame. By the way, it was Karen who got me the Franklin Furnace gig.
Well, that is the historical context for this interview. Enjoy!
Linda: To clear up his problem was to stop drinking coffee for a while. He said it wasn’t forever.
Q2: Right. It’s very hard.
Linda: Frank said fine. He just stopped right away. He said I won’t drink it until I get back. So he hasn’t had coffee for a couple of months.
Q2: That’s good. I have a pre-ulcer condition.
Linda: So you don’t drink it at all?
Q2: Well, the last 2 weeks it’s been acting up, ever since we started this video business, and the strain. Going shooting at midnight is not exactly good for your health if you have ‘til 2 or 3 in the morning tapings.
Linda: That’s what it’s been like for us all week.
Q2: Yeah, running around. New York is conducive to a certain unhealthiness.
Frank: Media blitz.
Linda: Yeah, we’re just adjusting to it. It’s just different than what we’re used to. Is this half inch?
Q2: It’s half inch. Everything’s auto on it but we found out the auto functions don’t work so well.
Linda: Why’s it so big?
Q2: For stability. We could’ve gotten one of the smaller ones but they don’t…this can go on the shoulder, it can cradle a camera. It’s a little more stable for shooting. It’s also very low light. You can shoot under a candle light, a single candle light. It’s very good and it’s got stereo sound.
Frank: Last night all the lights they put on.
Q2: They didn’t need that. We knew that that would happen and we thought it would upset him.
Linda: He told them no lights. We told them just a slide projector and they said fine, but when the performance started they started putting the lights on. They’re bad.
Q2: Yeah, they are. They’re film people. I’m rolling. You can just talk. We’re just having a party here.
Q: Frank how long have you been in New York
Frank: One week.
Q: And how long are you going to stay? Do you have any more performances?
Frank: No. Tomorrow we leave for Philadelphia for a performance there.
Q: How many performances do you have in Philly?
Frank: One.
Q: Who are you going to stay with in Philadelphia, friends?
Frank: Yes, she’s a friend and she’s also the person that booked us at the gallery there.
Q: Can you tell our viewers about your theory of eroplay? What is eroplay?
Frank: Playing physically but not sexually.
Q: When does it become sexual and how to you keep it from becoming sexual?
Frank: What your intention is, is how you keep it from being sexual?
Q: Is that your intention to keep it from being sexual?
Frank: When I eroplay, yes.
Q: When you eroplay then you eroplay. When you have sex then you have sex.
Frank: Yes.
Q: How do you think eroplay can be helpful to others?
Frank: In a lot of ways, like before people just had sex. If they wanted to be at all physical with another person their only option was to have sex with the person, so they just jammed all their needs for intimacy and play and physicalness into sex even when sex did not satisfy those needs.
Q: Have you ever read a book by Wilhelm Reich called The Function of the Orgasm?
Frank: I have heard about it and read about his theory.
Q: In his book, The Function of the Orgasm, he talks about the orgasm in relation to a bladder. You fill the bladder up and you have tension then you release the bladder and it’s fulfilled and happily satisfying. He got to the point where he said that fascist Italy was a lack of satisfying orgasm. What do you think of those things? He said that if you weren’t satisfied then you had what he called a secondary impulse.
Frank: He was still influenced by Freud so he focused on the sex act.
Q: Rather than play.
Frank: But what he is saying is basically true. Look at Reagan, at what he is going after - any erotic.
Q: He has a lot of missiles.
Linda: What do you mean?
Frank: I mean Meese.
Linda: The anti-obscenity type panels? You’re saying that that kind of oppression, that there’s an oppressiveness coming out of the government from Meese affecting that, trying to repress any kind of release of anything that has to do with erotic or sex or physical stuff.
Q: Have you felt repressed at all in performing your pieces?
Frank: No, but I am waiting.
Q: You’re waiting for someone to come and nail on you.
Q2: Have you seen Paul Cotton? You know Paul Cotton’s performance?
Frank: Yes.
Q2: Paul has been arrested several times. I think they finally gave up. He was so persistent. Paul at Easter would do a performance as an Easter bunny with his genitals exposed and got popped a couple of times in Berkeley I remember.
Frank: We did a performance together.
Q2: Very good! I’d love to see that! What did you do?
Linda: Basically Frank invited Paul to be a guest at Frank’s series at UCB and he told Paul to use Frank as a prop and whatever Paul came up with was ok. So he used Frank as a prop. Paul came in with a costume he had made for Frank which included spaghetti hair and basically not much, just a few strips of things around Frank. He painted Frank’s fingernails and then he held Frank on his lap always dressed as his Easter bunny and they just kind of rocked there together, and Paul had some spiritual kind of speaker talking on a tape recorder.
Q: How do you think being in a wheelchair and not being able to talk has helped or hindered you?
Frank: It is one of my tools.
Q: I was thinking after I saw your performance last night, how would you feel if you came to a performance and you saw what I saw last night. What if you saw a fellow like yourself in a wheelchair, that couldn’t talk, or you saw a person like myself, that can talk and can walk, doing what you did and you were in the audience? What would you think of that?
Frank: I obviously would like it. I would no do it if I did not like it. In fact, I do it partly because no one else is doing it and I want to see it and so I have to do it myself.
Q2: That goes back to “if you want something done then do it yourself”.
Q: And what did you do before this? Why did you think of doing this?
Frank: To be with people, like I took an intensive film course.
Linda: He took an intensive film course and learned how to make movies and then when he was finished with the course he couldn’t afford to make movies. So he did what he called the non films before there was video stuff, and he would have people come over and he would do non films with them. That’s how he got started.
Q: So you liked to be with people. Before that you felt that you weren’t with people? You were alienated or alone?
Q2: You spoke about being a voyeur I remember. I thought that was nice though because I’ve always thought of myself as a voyeur, particularly when I’m behind the camera sometimes.
Frank: Not by choice.
Linda: You were a voyeur not by choice.
Q: How can you be a voyeur not by choice?
Frank: I did not have my board and pointer until I was close to 20.
Q: You had no way to communicate before that?
Linda: He could communicate with his family. They had their system of going through the alphabet which he uses even now at home when he doesn’t have the board and pointer on, but anybody other than his family couldn’t communicate directly to him, and if they wanted to then it had to go through his family, his mother or brother, and that didn’t happen.
Q2: That’s an amazing thing because even though you were a voyeur not by choice, within your body is an incredible person with this mind thinking and seeing and feeling everything that everyone else sees and feels. The difficulty is it might be frustrating to express that for Frank but it’s like one up. It’s all happening and yet you know it’s happening and no one else may know it’s happening.
Frank: It gave me a base so when I finally got into the action…
Linda: You had a lot of ideas about being.
Q: How did you create the board or did your family help you make it?
Frank: When I was 17 I had an idea for the pointer. The board was not the key. It was my pointer that was the breakthrough.
Q: When you communicated with your family, how did you do that before the board?
Frank: But they did not want to let me use a pointer.
Linda: When he was a child they wanted to make him normal and so they tried to get him to walk, they tried to get him to use his fingers to type. So when he was 17 and he had this idea of the pointer to learn to type because he saw that the other stuff wasn’t allowing him to communicate and it was just such a struggle. He didn’t really have any desire to be normal. He was more motivated by wanted to just be able to communicate.
Q: His family didn’t want him to use the pointer?
Frank: The doctors and the therapists were the ones that wanted me to be normal.
Linda: And they were the ones that were kind of encouraging his family to follow in that direction.
Q: If you couldn’t communicate with them then it must have been pretty frustrating for you Frank.
Frank: The school was about to drop me because I wasn’t able to keep up. Finally my teacher made them try the pointer and after 5 minutes I was typing. I should have typed “I told you so”.
Q: Those are the perfect words.
Q2: They thought he was a slow learner.
Q: How do other people communicate in your situation if they don’t use your system? What do they usually do?
Frank: It varies.
Q: None of those other systems of communicating were attractive to you? You didn’t like them? They didn’t work?
Frank: 2 years ago…
Linda: The computer board? 2 years ago the social workers and therapists came up with another idea for
Frank which was a computerized board that would talk and print out on a lighted screen and everything.
Q: Did you try that one?
Linda: Oh yeah.
Frank: Because this is too low tech.
Linda: So everybody spent all this money and bought him this board.
Frank: $5000
Linda: $5000 to get him this electronic board without him having a chance to try it. He tried it on and off for about a month and it was a lot harder. What would happen is that people would…like when you communicate with Frank like this you have to read everything aloud and you tend to guess and try putting it together. But with that board because it had this voice and everything, people would either get fascinated by the electronics and not pay attention to what he was saying, or they would figure they’d just wait until he prints out the whole thing and see it splashed on the screen so they’d stand there and meanwhile he’d have to work to print every single word out rather than having to have them guess.
Frank: And I had to aim.
Linda: And the keys were such that he had to hit them right in the middle so that was really hard.
Q: How did you meet your wife Frank? How did you meet Linda?
Linda: I was working in a travel agency and he came in to get some flight information. The way he tells the story is he looked down my shirt and said “You’d be great in a play I’m doing!”
Q: You were type casting?
Frank: Puff Puff
Linda: Puffing on his cigar. And then we just started hanging out and doing projects together right away.
Q: This was in San Francisco?
Linda: Berkeley. He had just moved to Berkeley.
Q: Where did you live before that Frank?
Frank: New York city.
Q: How long were you in New York?
Frank: For 9 months.
Q: Why did you move back? You didn’t like it?
Frank: I could not get in.
Q: Could not get in where?
Linda: Just get in, like into something that was going on, hooked into something.
Frank: Like here you read about things after they happen.
Linda: So he’d read about something after it happened but he wouldn’t know about it before it happened.
Q: And you feel that in San Francisco, in Berkeley, you are more in?
Frank: Yes. In New York city I did a workshop and 2 performances during that time, but no root.
Linda: Didn’t get rooted.
Q: So, a lot of who you are, your work your play, everything who you are is important for you to be in, be intimate with people.
Frank: Yes.
Q: I think you’re doing a good job at it.
Q2: How is it, you mentioned when I was reading the book about artists like Chris Burden and where do you see yourself in that? You referred to him as the older. Chris has moved onto video. Chris is actually mainstream at this point.
Frank: Head of the department at UCLA.
Q2: Success has gone to his head.
Frank: I am still a rebel, like I am more tied into the young artists.
Q2: Did you see any of the performances early works by Terry Fox in Berkeley at all?
Frank: No.
Q: Have you seen Karen Finlay?
Frank: Yes.
Q: What did you think of that?
Frank: Which time?
Q: The last time? What did you see the last time?
Frank: She is in transition. She now has to deal with fame to make sure fame don’t take her power away. Like before she famous she could focus on the magic, the shock.
Q: Why can’t she do that now?
Frank: They accept everything she does.
Q2: That’s true.
Q: That reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut said. He said something like “In America it’s almost worse than being in a repressive society because anything you do is leveled.” You know if you were to be put in jail or suppressed at least it meant something, but if anything you do is just water off a duck’s back it doesn’t mean anything.
Frank: Yes. That is the plot.
Linda: Frank often refers to the plot that we’re all victims of and also perpetrators of the plot at the same time. It’s the thing that kind of keeps us out of touch with our own power and our own uniqueness and keeps suppressing them in a very tiny little way so you can’t quite put your finger on it.
Q: Do you see that happening to you Frank? I mean since you’ve been in New York people have been interviewing you and filming you.
Frank: They try but I am like Zorro. They can not quite peg me.
Q2: Good. Let’s hope they never do.
Frank: That is my job. Keep it un-pegged so it cannot be muted.
Q: I can’t think of anymore questions. What’s your area code?
Linda: You can tell we’re local. I can just put one on there now. 415
Q2: Thank you Frank.
Q: Do you have anything to say in parting?
Frank: No. It is your job to get me to say something in parting.
Q: I guess there is one question I did forget. What’s your favorite fruit juice?
Frank: You are doing a shitty job of getting me to say something in parting.
Q: You’re not going to tell me what your favorite fruit juice is then?
Frank: For money I will make something up.
Q: Thanks a lot Frank.
L: That was fun!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
April Reality Playings poster is up!
and we continue the roll! Don't miss this one! I have surprises planned!REALITY PLAYINGS:
experiments in experience/participation performance
Frank Moore, world-known shaman performance artist, will conduct improvised passions of musicians, actors, dancers, and audience members in a laboratory setting to create altered realities of fusion beyond taboos. Bring your passions and musical instruments and your senses of adventure and humor.
Other than that,
ADMISSION IS FREE!
(But donations will be accepted.)
Saturday, April 18, 2009
8pm
TEMESCAL ARTS CENTER
511 48th Street
Oakland, CA 94609-2058
For more information
Call: 510-526-7858
email: fmoore@eroplay.com
http://www.eroplay.com/events.html
http://www.temescalartscenter.org/
Upcoming performances in this series:
Saturday, May 16, 2009
"...He's wonderful and hilarious and knows exactly what it's all about and has earned my undying respect. What he's doing is impossible, and he knows it. That's good art...." L.A. Weekly
Resisting "the easy and superficial descriptions..., Moore's work challenges the consensus view more strongly in ways less acceptable than...angry tirades and bitter attacks on consumer culture." Chicago New City
"If performance art has a radical edge, it has to be Frank Moore." Cleveland Edition
"Transformative..." Moore "is thwarting nature in an astonishing manner, and is fusing art, ritual and religion in ways the Eurocentric world has only dim memories of. Espousing a kind of paganism without bite and aggression, Frank Moore is indeed worth watching." High Performance Magazine
"Surely wonderful and mind-goosing experience." L.A. Reader
Downloadable poster here (.jpg)
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
bizarre révolutionnaire's nightmare
Frank,
Made this bizarre dream in which the republicans did a ''coup d'Etat'' and took power at Washington again !
W. Bush was there, and Cheney ( he was the head of it all );
Obama's election was just a small relief for the american public in order to fool them into believing in the american democracy !
And I was trying to tell one of my friend in Montréal about it, hearing it in the news back there, and an automated voice poped out in my cell phone advizing me that my call was being moniterd and listened too !
What a bizarre dream ( which was actually a small part of a collage of multiple parts, not linked together whatsover, and I can't remember the rest very clearlly... ).
Whatever, just had to tell someone I guess.
Thanks for reading Frank ! :)
And continue those art performances Frank, this world needs open spirit people like you to crack their mind open all right !
Révolutionnairement,
Rafael
* * * * *
just call me the minds' cracker!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Made this bizarre dream in which the republicans did a ''coup d'Etat'' and took power at Washington again !
W. Bush was there, and Cheney ( he was the head of it all );
Obama's election was just a small relief for the american public in order to fool them into believing in the american democracy !
And I was trying to tell one of my friend in Montréal about it, hearing it in the news back there, and an automated voice poped out in my cell phone advizing me that my call was being moniterd and listened too !
What a bizarre dream ( which was actually a small part of a collage of multiple parts, not linked together whatsover, and I can't remember the rest very clearlly... ).
Whatever, just had to tell someone I guess.
Thanks for reading Frank ! :)
And continue those art performances Frank, this world needs open spirit people like you to crack their mind open all right !
Révolutionnairement,
Rafael
* * * * *
just call me the minds' cracker!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
saturday's performance
We are on a roll! Saturday we did the second performance of our REALITY PLAYINGS monthly series at TEMESCAL ARTS CENTER in Oakland. We are back to the core of the work… Working without a net, playing off of whoever comes, without a plan. Except for one performance for the campaign, it has been four years since I have done this level of improve playing. It feels good to be back to the core!
This one was heavy into audience participation. It also was the first performance we have done in years [except for poetry readings and campaign speeches] without any nudity or explicit eroticism. It just happened that way. But I got shit when we got home from our eighty year old neighbor church going Betty. See, Betty gives pearls, beads, and jewelry to Linda and Jen for their performance costumes when they are nude. And she just gave us a new bunch. But no nudity! I had to explain why there was not nudity and promise there will be nudity next time!
And of course the night of slipping into altered states was greased by the musical adventures of Doctor O.!
DA BOYZ:
We were early to the space, and found that spot right in front, perfect. No one was in the space, so we opened it up, and got started loading things in! Really fun to be back in Temescal again, and setting things up. Gels on the lights this time, xmas lights adding more cozy color and warmth to the space ... we were all setting up, arranging the space ... really fun. Dr. O soon arrived! He got set up ... We needed all the extra time! And it seemed like it wasn't long before the first person arrived ... it was Ben again from ECNG. Neat! Then a few more people came in ... Frank got started, asking people how they got there that night ... and asking Ben to talk about the last performance ... and asked him why he came back? We can't remember exactly what he said, but he talked about it being an "authentic experience", something along the lines of that it was a space and a context in which he and others could be fully himself and real ...
Frank went around the room ... what did everyone do for fun? This brought up some pain, Ben said about himself ... but Frank masterfully transformed it into joy ... Ben liked to eat out ... Where do you eat??! "Always looking for good places to eat out!" Ben mentioned some places on Solano that he liked, since he lives in Albany ... Frank also recommended Ajanta and Cugini ... pricey, but Ben could go there for his anniversary lunch! Ben laughed ... Frank always knew just what to say .... He used everyone's responses to create something, to weave it all together, to connect ... it was really fun to watch. Charles liked to dance ... Frank immediately had him dancing a short dance to the music ... The woman with the short hair came to play, liked games, physical play ... would she do Gestures with Frank? Sure! The girl and her guy friend ... she liked going to see strange movies, like David Lynch ... Frank liked them too ... was the performance so far like one of those movies? She said it was ... especially the music! Dr. O's music was amazing all night long, and really expanded too when he was joined with people that Frank had play with him from the "audience". The girl's friend liked to waterski and fish for fun ... you could tell he thought he might be mocked for such "mundane" passions ... like that wasn't "artistic" enough or something! But no, Frank said he went fishing once with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans ... and their sidekick! The guy was loving it! Frank caught something, but it was "rigged"! Then he went deep sea fishing later on, but didn't catch anything that time ... hard to rig deep sea fishing! A girl came late ... she had come from a flier she saw on Monterey Ave., which Jen put up! We talked later about how it felt like everyone came to the performance with a strong sense of resonating with something they saw in the flier, and a willingness to play, to experience ... not simply to watch, however they might have been framing what that might mean for themselves ... Corey said later that the amazing variety of types of people, races, genders, etc., etc. drove home the fact that people were responding to what Frank is doing on a much more essential level from the very beginning ... he wasn't appealing to a certain "type" of person, he wasn't "hip", it wasn't mostly people from some kind of cultural sub-group or whatnot ... it was all kinds of people responding to something they felt in themselves ... a desire to connect, to go deeper, to push beyond themselves. That is what the asian girl said in her own words ... And Frank asked her if she would "go all the way" ... he didn't know what that meant, but would she? She said she would ... she likes to go all the way, "because she can" ... and its fun! Frank said that he is like that too.
And then Frank set everyone up doing something ... Charles and the waterski guy and the short haired woman would join Dr. O in the band ... He would do gestures with the asian girl, directed by the other girl in David Lynchian fashion ... Ben was the audience, at first ... It was really interesting to feel this shift into risking, playing, unknown ... Linda read the Gestures, and the adjectives ... the girl did a little bit of directing ... then Frank would shift things around, and now the asian girl was directing, and the Lynch girl was doing the gestures with Frank ... Frank paired Jen and Charles to do the gestures too ... the music was going along all this time, blasts of trumpet now accompanying the neverending exploring sounds of Dr. O and the other players ... it was beautiful ... and under the direction of the asian girl, it got very goofy and silly, fun! Frank kept moving people around ... some people chose to remove themselves ... when the Gesture came up for rubbing each other's genitals, not for sexual reasons, but for body comfort, the Lynch girl quickly removed herself, and it wasn't long before she was out the door with her guy friend, who had been having a good time on the trumpet!
Gestures was really beautiful, small, exploring ... it was neat that Ben's entry into it was through the departure of the girl ... he was willing to risk. He and Frank rubbed each other ... Charles too, he got the same Gesture read when he and Frank were paired up ... The asian girl also seemed to relax and open up ... and stayed the whole time, doing all the gestures with all of her pairings ... and amazingly, not one article of clothing came off! Ironic that this was the performance that The Berkeley Daily Planet would not list because of Frank Moore's "detractors", because of its "adults only" nature! The one performance where no clothes came off!
And then Frank asked Charles to do a dance to the music of Dr. O and others from the "audience". It was an amazing dance, part of which was with Frank, which was really beautiful, intense, connected and direct ... it reminded Frank and Linda of a butoh-style dance that someone had done with Frank in a performance years ago...
And then Frank asked everyone what they thought of the performance ... which, as Linda was saying afterward, really felt like an important, indispensable part of the performance, the way in which the experiences of the performance became real, solidified ... the performance was continuing to work through this conversation at the end ... we were blown away by the things people said. What Ben said about his experience of this performance, doing the gestures ... how it pushed him through his fear ... how Frank followed what he said into his realizing that there really wasn't anything there to fear ... He said that he kept running away and coming back internally, but externally, physically, he was there the whole time, never left. But he always came back inside, and Frank asked him if the running away got less and less? Yes. Frank said it was great to have him there again, and to come back! He could build on "regulars" ... The asian girl's experience echo'd what Ben had said ... but she and Frank got into a really interesting conversation about "safety zones" ... she was afraid to take her coat off, although she kept wanting to, because of some strange fear of being "invaded", which she realized was something that was from inside herself, something she was "working on" ... she said she heard the voices of her family talking at her also ... Frank said that being vulnerable was much stronger than being rigid ... and Linda said that it was a general principle of life, wasn't it? ... that when one is all tight and protected, one is easier to be controlled, to be harmed ... but when one is open, vulnerable, everything is more fluid. Frank and the girl talked about being a rubber ball, able to bounce back, to be flexible vs. walking on eggshells, where things are brittle and can snap. Really amazing!
The short-haired woman really appreciated the freedom she felt at the performance, that there was a lot of choice to do what she wanted to do ... she talked about how it did not conform to her expectations ... that she had a picture of being involved in some way, in participating, which is why she had come, but did not think it would be so much, which she liked! And experiencing Frank too was a big part of it. Charles, the dancer, spoke of the difference in coming into the space and being guided by Frank into these realities, and how that would compare to how things would feel if the audience members were left more to their own devices. It felt like what he was trying to say was that Frank's direction allowed for more to happen, for more depth ... to explore more deeply in freedom and still feel safe ....he was using the word "responsibility", as if people did not have to take responsibility as much with Frank guiding them the way he was ... but it felt like he meant more that this performance was more about following than deciding ...
Frank passed the hat at one point. It was amazing that people filled the basket at the end of the night! Another amazing performance. Charles the dancer asked near the end what was the video going to be used for? It really shifted things when people ask things like that ... suddenly there is introduced a lack of trust which is really palpable.
On the way home, we were talking about the performance, hoping the rain did not amount to much .. that it would stop long enough to get Frank inside and get the stuff unloaded! It cooperated somewhat ... We were talking about a lot of the things we wrote above ... we just loved how Frank always knew what to say, always connected to people, made things feel intimate, close, small, real .... he always speaks plain, opens up the limits of what people think is possible, doesn't compromise, and uses everything, especially transforming things that one would think would be hardships into positives ... and often doing the unexpected!
JEN:
It was spitting just a little but stopped when we were getting Frank into the car. We were ready to go. It's exciting and so much fun because we never know what's going to happen at a performance. The people that are going to come don't know what to expect either, but we're in the same boat! We got to the space and unloaded everything. Then Mikee and Corey set up sound and lights while Alexi and I put up the banners. Linda and Corey worked on the swag table, I put down the mats and blankets and then christmas lights went up which looked great. Dr. Oblivious arrived and starting playing once he set up. The space was transformed.
People started coming in. The guy from ENG who was at the first performance was the first to arrive. It's fun to have him come back. More people arrived and Frank talked to everyone asking them what they do for fun. The guy from ENG said that the question brought up pain in him but then he said that one of the things he does it go out to dinner. Frank asked him where he went and then started talking about places to eat on Solano, telling him that he should go to Cuccini's for one of the ENG anniversary dinner, and that made the guy laugh. There were some musicians there but they didn't bring their instruments, so that was going to be put on the flyer for next month. One guy said he liked to water ski and fish so Frank talked to him about fishing, telling him the story of when he fished with Roy Rogers. It really made the guy relax. Another guy said he liked to dance so Frank asked him how he would dance to the music Dr. O was playing and he did a little demo of that. Frank introduced Dr. O and talked about how he came to be one of the many musicians that plays with us. Some of the women said that they came because they liked to play and go past boundaries. They saw the flyer and were attracted by the prospect of doing this. One of the girls was full of energy and said that it's fun to challenge herself and try to find ways to get past the boundaries that she has. Frank said that they should play gestures together with another girl directing them as if they were in a David Lynch film, while Frank has some of the other people play in the band.
Gestures is a game where a slip of paper with an action is pulled out of a bag at random. An adjective is also pulled at random and the people playing have to do what it says the way it says to do it. The first gesture was to curiously show each other your belly and rub it. The girl was wearing a long dress and very quickly pulled it up and rubbed her belly, but then when she was told she had to keep doing the gesture until the next gesture was called, she just rubbed her belly without pulling up her dress again. More gestures were called but she wasn't really doing them so Frank switched the girls so the one directing was now doing gestures with him. They rubbed calves together and rubbed shoulders etc. The other girl was now directing. Then Frank said for me to play gestures with one of the guys. We rubbed thighs together and the directions from the girl were to do it acting like monkeys, and then like it was raining. It was fun to play! Then the gesture was pulled to rub each others genitals for body comfort. The girl said she wouldn't do that and very quickly went to the bathroom, then left with her boyfriend who had been playing trumpet in the band.
Frank had the ENG guy come up and play with him. You could feel people opening up to the play and also their fear of it, but it was a cozy place, a warm environment where you felt you could open up to it without reacting to the fear. Frank kept switching partners and calling others in. At one point there were 3 couples playing, everyone risking because it was totally random what gesture would be called. Bodies were intertwined and moving together, chests rubbed, butts rubbed. It was a lot of fun and the first time I ever played gestures. At one point another woman was with Frank when the gesture to rub genitals appeared again and she refused to do it, so Frank said that she could then direct. She seemed a little disappointed about it but she stayed. Then the game ended when Frank had the guy who danced at the beginning do a dance with him while the rest of us played in the band.
When the dance was over everyone sat together on the mats and talked about how they liked it, how it felt. Frank loved dancing with the guy and said it reminded him of a Buto dance he had done at another performance. The guy from ENG talked about how he was running away in his mind even though his body was here doing the gestures. Frank asked if he came back in his mind, and he said that he came back several times. Frank asked if he ran less each time and he said that he did. He said that he ran out of fear and Frank asked him what he was afraid of. When he thought about it there was nothing concrete to be afraid of but he said it had something to do with feeling like he was a bad person, like he shouldn't be doing what he was doing.
One of the girls had the same experience and said that she didn't want to take off her coat because she would feel exposed if she did that. Everyone enjoyed playing together even though it had challenged them and they had gone beyond their comfort zones. Frank talked about comfort zones and how they're danger zones. In your comfort zone you are rigid and tight, not open and flexible. That rigid tightness is hard and fragile like an egg shell, but if you're open and flexible to anything then you can bounce like a rubber ball. It makes it easier to dance with things and you are more protected that way.
There was a guy who came in and shortly left when Frank said he liked rubber balls. Then he came back with a rubber ball and a notebook. Frank asked if he had seen the performance. He hadn't. He said that it was because of indecision. Frank said it took him 2 hrs plus to decide, then the next performance starts for him at 5pm and it will already be in progress then. He didn't have much to say after that and then left.
Frank asked me to compare this performance to previous performances. It felt the same in that it was a comfy cave to play in, but it was different because everyone was playing together and there was not a focus that people watched. It felt like the first performace I went to in Brooklyn where everyone played together, and Frank was in the cave when a lot of that was going on. All the performances have really been different in terms of what was going on and how the audience participated. This one felt like it opened up a space for people to play with each other that is outside of comfort zones and what is deemed as 'appropriate'. It was really deep fun that went beyond taboos. Every person talked about how they liked the performance, including Dr. O. It was really fun to hear how everyone took it in.
After the performance Linda talked about how gestures always fits the situation perfectly and whatever is pulled seems to be just what is needed. It always feels like a progression into deeper play. We talked about how each person played, and how the one girl left because Frank really hit a button with her. We got everything packed up and then headed home. In the car Linda talked about how it seemed like it was one of those times where what Frank is doing is intersecting with what people are looking for, what people want.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
This one was heavy into audience participation. It also was the first performance we have done in years [except for poetry readings and campaign speeches] without any nudity or explicit eroticism. It just happened that way. But I got shit when we got home from our eighty year old neighbor church going Betty. See, Betty gives pearls, beads, and jewelry to Linda and Jen for their performance costumes when they are nude. And she just gave us a new bunch. But no nudity! I had to explain why there was not nudity and promise there will be nudity next time!
And of course the night of slipping into altered states was greased by the musical adventures of Doctor O.!
DA BOYZ:
We were early to the space, and found that spot right in front, perfect. No one was in the space, so we opened it up, and got started loading things in! Really fun to be back in Temescal again, and setting things up. Gels on the lights this time, xmas lights adding more cozy color and warmth to the space ... we were all setting up, arranging the space ... really fun. Dr. O soon arrived! He got set up ... We needed all the extra time! And it seemed like it wasn't long before the first person arrived ... it was Ben again from ECNG. Neat! Then a few more people came in ... Frank got started, asking people how they got there that night ... and asking Ben to talk about the last performance ... and asked him why he came back? We can't remember exactly what he said, but he talked about it being an "authentic experience", something along the lines of that it was a space and a context in which he and others could be fully himself and real ...
Frank went around the room ... what did everyone do for fun? This brought up some pain, Ben said about himself ... but Frank masterfully transformed it into joy ... Ben liked to eat out ... Where do you eat??! "Always looking for good places to eat out!" Ben mentioned some places on Solano that he liked, since he lives in Albany ... Frank also recommended Ajanta and Cugini ... pricey, but Ben could go there for his anniversary lunch! Ben laughed ... Frank always knew just what to say .... He used everyone's responses to create something, to weave it all together, to connect ... it was really fun to watch. Charles liked to dance ... Frank immediately had him dancing a short dance to the music ... The woman with the short hair came to play, liked games, physical play ... would she do Gestures with Frank? Sure! The girl and her guy friend ... she liked going to see strange movies, like David Lynch ... Frank liked them too ... was the performance so far like one of those movies? She said it was ... especially the music! Dr. O's music was amazing all night long, and really expanded too when he was joined with people that Frank had play with him from the "audience". The girl's friend liked to waterski and fish for fun ... you could tell he thought he might be mocked for such "mundane" passions ... like that wasn't "artistic" enough or something! But no, Frank said he went fishing once with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans ... and their sidekick! The guy was loving it! Frank caught something, but it was "rigged"! Then he went deep sea fishing later on, but didn't catch anything that time ... hard to rig deep sea fishing! A girl came late ... she had come from a flier she saw on Monterey Ave., which Jen put up! We talked later about how it felt like everyone came to the performance with a strong sense of resonating with something they saw in the flier, and a willingness to play, to experience ... not simply to watch, however they might have been framing what that might mean for themselves ... Corey said later that the amazing variety of types of people, races, genders, etc., etc. drove home the fact that people were responding to what Frank is doing on a much more essential level from the very beginning ... he wasn't appealing to a certain "type" of person, he wasn't "hip", it wasn't mostly people from some kind of cultural sub-group or whatnot ... it was all kinds of people responding to something they felt in themselves ... a desire to connect, to go deeper, to push beyond themselves. That is what the asian girl said in her own words ... And Frank asked her if she would "go all the way" ... he didn't know what that meant, but would she? She said she would ... she likes to go all the way, "because she can" ... and its fun! Frank said that he is like that too.
And then Frank set everyone up doing something ... Charles and the waterski guy and the short haired woman would join Dr. O in the band ... He would do gestures with the asian girl, directed by the other girl in David Lynchian fashion ... Ben was the audience, at first ... It was really interesting to feel this shift into risking, playing, unknown ... Linda read the Gestures, and the adjectives ... the girl did a little bit of directing ... then Frank would shift things around, and now the asian girl was directing, and the Lynch girl was doing the gestures with Frank ... Frank paired Jen and Charles to do the gestures too ... the music was going along all this time, blasts of trumpet now accompanying the neverending exploring sounds of Dr. O and the other players ... it was beautiful ... and under the direction of the asian girl, it got very goofy and silly, fun! Frank kept moving people around ... some people chose to remove themselves ... when the Gesture came up for rubbing each other's genitals, not for sexual reasons, but for body comfort, the Lynch girl quickly removed herself, and it wasn't long before she was out the door with her guy friend, who had been having a good time on the trumpet!
Gestures was really beautiful, small, exploring ... it was neat that Ben's entry into it was through the departure of the girl ... he was willing to risk. He and Frank rubbed each other ... Charles too, he got the same Gesture read when he and Frank were paired up ... The asian girl also seemed to relax and open up ... and stayed the whole time, doing all the gestures with all of her pairings ... and amazingly, not one article of clothing came off! Ironic that this was the performance that The Berkeley Daily Planet would not list because of Frank Moore's "detractors", because of its "adults only" nature! The one performance where no clothes came off!
And then Frank asked Charles to do a dance to the music of Dr. O and others from the "audience". It was an amazing dance, part of which was with Frank, which was really beautiful, intense, connected and direct ... it reminded Frank and Linda of a butoh-style dance that someone had done with Frank in a performance years ago...
And then Frank asked everyone what they thought of the performance ... which, as Linda was saying afterward, really felt like an important, indispensable part of the performance, the way in which the experiences of the performance became real, solidified ... the performance was continuing to work through this conversation at the end ... we were blown away by the things people said. What Ben said about his experience of this performance, doing the gestures ... how it pushed him through his fear ... how Frank followed what he said into his realizing that there really wasn't anything there to fear ... He said that he kept running away and coming back internally, but externally, physically, he was there the whole time, never left. But he always came back inside, and Frank asked him if the running away got less and less? Yes. Frank said it was great to have him there again, and to come back! He could build on "regulars" ... The asian girl's experience echo'd what Ben had said ... but she and Frank got into a really interesting conversation about "safety zones" ... she was afraid to take her coat off, although she kept wanting to, because of some strange fear of being "invaded", which she realized was something that was from inside herself, something she was "working on" ... she said she heard the voices of her family talking at her also ... Frank said that being vulnerable was much stronger than being rigid ... and Linda said that it was a general principle of life, wasn't it? ... that when one is all tight and protected, one is easier to be controlled, to be harmed ... but when one is open, vulnerable, everything is more fluid. Frank and the girl talked about being a rubber ball, able to bounce back, to be flexible vs. walking on eggshells, where things are brittle and can snap. Really amazing!
The short-haired woman really appreciated the freedom she felt at the performance, that there was a lot of choice to do what she wanted to do ... she talked about how it did not conform to her expectations ... that she had a picture of being involved in some way, in participating, which is why she had come, but did not think it would be so much, which she liked! And experiencing Frank too was a big part of it. Charles, the dancer, spoke of the difference in coming into the space and being guided by Frank into these realities, and how that would compare to how things would feel if the audience members were left more to their own devices. It felt like what he was trying to say was that Frank's direction allowed for more to happen, for more depth ... to explore more deeply in freedom and still feel safe ....he was using the word "responsibility", as if people did not have to take responsibility as much with Frank guiding them the way he was ... but it felt like he meant more that this performance was more about following than deciding ...
Frank passed the hat at one point. It was amazing that people filled the basket at the end of the night! Another amazing performance. Charles the dancer asked near the end what was the video going to be used for? It really shifted things when people ask things like that ... suddenly there is introduced a lack of trust which is really palpable.
On the way home, we were talking about the performance, hoping the rain did not amount to much .. that it would stop long enough to get Frank inside and get the stuff unloaded! It cooperated somewhat ... We were talking about a lot of the things we wrote above ... we just loved how Frank always knew what to say, always connected to people, made things feel intimate, close, small, real .... he always speaks plain, opens up the limits of what people think is possible, doesn't compromise, and uses everything, especially transforming things that one would think would be hardships into positives ... and often doing the unexpected!
JEN:
It was spitting just a little but stopped when we were getting Frank into the car. We were ready to go. It's exciting and so much fun because we never know what's going to happen at a performance. The people that are going to come don't know what to expect either, but we're in the same boat! We got to the space and unloaded everything. Then Mikee and Corey set up sound and lights while Alexi and I put up the banners. Linda and Corey worked on the swag table, I put down the mats and blankets and then christmas lights went up which looked great. Dr. Oblivious arrived and starting playing once he set up. The space was transformed.
People started coming in. The guy from ENG who was at the first performance was the first to arrive. It's fun to have him come back. More people arrived and Frank talked to everyone asking them what they do for fun. The guy from ENG said that the question brought up pain in him but then he said that one of the things he does it go out to dinner. Frank asked him where he went and then started talking about places to eat on Solano, telling him that he should go to Cuccini's for one of the ENG anniversary dinner, and that made the guy laugh. There were some musicians there but they didn't bring their instruments, so that was going to be put on the flyer for next month. One guy said he liked to water ski and fish so Frank talked to him about fishing, telling him the story of when he fished with Roy Rogers. It really made the guy relax. Another guy said he liked to dance so Frank asked him how he would dance to the music Dr. O was playing and he did a little demo of that. Frank introduced Dr. O and talked about how he came to be one of the many musicians that plays with us. Some of the women said that they came because they liked to play and go past boundaries. They saw the flyer and were attracted by the prospect of doing this. One of the girls was full of energy and said that it's fun to challenge herself and try to find ways to get past the boundaries that she has. Frank said that they should play gestures together with another girl directing them as if they were in a David Lynch film, while Frank has some of the other people play in the band.
Gestures is a game where a slip of paper with an action is pulled out of a bag at random. An adjective is also pulled at random and the people playing have to do what it says the way it says to do it. The first gesture was to curiously show each other your belly and rub it. The girl was wearing a long dress and very quickly pulled it up and rubbed her belly, but then when she was told she had to keep doing the gesture until the next gesture was called, she just rubbed her belly without pulling up her dress again. More gestures were called but she wasn't really doing them so Frank switched the girls so the one directing was now doing gestures with him. They rubbed calves together and rubbed shoulders etc. The other girl was now directing. Then Frank said for me to play gestures with one of the guys. We rubbed thighs together and the directions from the girl were to do it acting like monkeys, and then like it was raining. It was fun to play! Then the gesture was pulled to rub each others genitals for body comfort. The girl said she wouldn't do that and very quickly went to the bathroom, then left with her boyfriend who had been playing trumpet in the band.
Frank had the ENG guy come up and play with him. You could feel people opening up to the play and also their fear of it, but it was a cozy place, a warm environment where you felt you could open up to it without reacting to the fear. Frank kept switching partners and calling others in. At one point there were 3 couples playing, everyone risking because it was totally random what gesture would be called. Bodies were intertwined and moving together, chests rubbed, butts rubbed. It was a lot of fun and the first time I ever played gestures. At one point another woman was with Frank when the gesture to rub genitals appeared again and she refused to do it, so Frank said that she could then direct. She seemed a little disappointed about it but she stayed. Then the game ended when Frank had the guy who danced at the beginning do a dance with him while the rest of us played in the band.
When the dance was over everyone sat together on the mats and talked about how they liked it, how it felt. Frank loved dancing with the guy and said it reminded him of a Buto dance he had done at another performance. The guy from ENG talked about how he was running away in his mind even though his body was here doing the gestures. Frank asked if he came back in his mind, and he said that he came back several times. Frank asked if he ran less each time and he said that he did. He said that he ran out of fear and Frank asked him what he was afraid of. When he thought about it there was nothing concrete to be afraid of but he said it had something to do with feeling like he was a bad person, like he shouldn't be doing what he was doing.
One of the girls had the same experience and said that she didn't want to take off her coat because she would feel exposed if she did that. Everyone enjoyed playing together even though it had challenged them and they had gone beyond their comfort zones. Frank talked about comfort zones and how they're danger zones. In your comfort zone you are rigid and tight, not open and flexible. That rigid tightness is hard and fragile like an egg shell, but if you're open and flexible to anything then you can bounce like a rubber ball. It makes it easier to dance with things and you are more protected that way.
There was a guy who came in and shortly left when Frank said he liked rubber balls. Then he came back with a rubber ball and a notebook. Frank asked if he had seen the performance. He hadn't. He said that it was because of indecision. Frank said it took him 2 hrs plus to decide, then the next performance starts for him at 5pm and it will already be in progress then. He didn't have much to say after that and then left.
Frank asked me to compare this performance to previous performances. It felt the same in that it was a comfy cave to play in, but it was different because everyone was playing together and there was not a focus that people watched. It felt like the first performace I went to in Brooklyn where everyone played together, and Frank was in the cave when a lot of that was going on. All the performances have really been different in terms of what was going on and how the audience participated. This one felt like it opened up a space for people to play with each other that is outside of comfort zones and what is deemed as 'appropriate'. It was really deep fun that went beyond taboos. Every person talked about how they liked the performance, including Dr. O. It was really fun to hear how everyone took it in.
After the performance Linda talked about how gestures always fits the situation perfectly and whatever is pulled seems to be just what is needed. It always feels like a progression into deeper play. We talked about how each person played, and how the one girl left because Frank really hit a button with her. We got everything packed up and then headed home. In the car Linda talked about how it seemed like it was one of those times where what Frank is doing is intersecting with what people are looking for, what people want.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
You have my vote
(from Meredith Estey:)
Ever since I saw your photo on wikipedia I knew there was something...different... about you. Your ideas are brilliant, and they do make perfect sense. That's how things should be done, common sense, good luck with the election Mr. Moore.
* * * * *
thanks, Meredith. Getting the ideas out there was the main purpose of my campaign. I am glad it is continuing to do that.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Ever since I saw your photo on wikipedia I knew there was something...different... about you. Your ideas are brilliant, and they do make perfect sense. That's how things should be done, common sense, good luck with the election Mr. Moore.
* * * * *
thanks, Meredith. Getting the ideas out there was the main purpose of my campaign. I am glad it is continuing to do that.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Re: a milestone!
(from Jeff Snyder:)
Super big Mozel-Tov Frank! It's nice to know you and the gang are out
there stirring shit up :)
* * * * *
thick black shit!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
* * * * *
Oh by the way, Mark (Phog Machine) and I are collaborating on a song. When it is completed, I'll make sure you get a copy.
Have a lovely weekend, Jeff
* * * * *
can not wait! I love bringing people together!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Super big Mozel-Tov Frank! It's nice to know you and the gang are out
there stirring shit up :)
* * * * *
thick black shit!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
* * * * *
Oh by the way, Mark (Phog Machine) and I are collaborating on a song. When it is completed, I'll make sure you get a copy.
Have a lovely weekend, Jeff
* * * * *
can not wait! I love bringing people together!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
a milestone!
we just finished the 400th episode of Frank Moore's Unlimited Possibilities for Berkeley's public access channel! each episode is two and a half hours long. so it is one thousand hours of programming! [we have done two other shows also (an hour format each)!
just one of the things we do here!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
just one of the things we do here!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
RE: [Fwd: hey, doctor oblivious!]
Too funny. I'm expecting a low turn out from our group for this one. Most people won't RSVP until a few days before the event either way. We'll see how many make it.
---dr o
* * * * *
never know! the last performance had a nice audience. for this one we are getting more listings in the papers...but that is usually when nobody comes!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
---dr o
* * * * *
never know! the last performance had a nice audience. for this one we are getting more listings in the papers...but that is usually when nobody comes!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
[Fwd: hey, doctor oblivious!]
hey dr. o,
wanted to make sure you received this email from frank!
Linda
wanted to make sure you received this email from frank!
Linda
* * * * *
I got it. I want to know how you guys got hold of my arts MeetUp group's posting about it? Did I send it to you and forgot?
---dr o
* * * * *
hey, as part of our marketing research we googled the performance...and got this! actually last month's performance we found another group planning to come...but never made it. this adds a new dimension to performing...seeing people's process of deciding to come [or not].
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
DON'T MISS THIS!
REALITY PLAYINGS:
experiments in experience/participation performance
Frank Moore, world-known shaman performance artist,
will conduct improvised passions of musicians, actors, dancers, and audience members
in a laboratory setting to create altered realities of fusion beyond taboos.
Bring your passions and your senses of adventure and humor.
Other than that,
ADMISSION IS FREE!
(But donations will be accepted.)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
8pm
TEMESCAL ARTS CENTER
511 48th Street
Oakland, CA 94609-2058
For more information
Call:
email: fmoore@eroplay.com
http://www.eroplay.com/events.html
http://www.temescalartscenter.org/
Upcoming performances in this series:
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
"...He's wonderful and hilarious and knows exactly what it's all about and has earned my undying respect. What he's doing is impossible, and he knows it. That's good art...." L.A. Weekly
Resisting "the easy and superficial descriptions..., Moore's work challenges the consensus view more strongly in ways less acceptable than...angry tirades and bitter attacks on consumer culture." Chicago New City
"If performance art has a radical edge, it has to be Frank Moore." Cleveland Edition
"Transformative..." Moore "is thwarting nature in an astonishing manner, and is fusing art, ritual and religion in ways the Eurocentric world has only dim memories of. Espousing a kind of paganism without bite and aggression, Frank Moore is indeed worth watching." High Performance Magazine
"Surely wonderful and mind-goosing experience." L.A. Reader
Downloadable poster here (.jpg)
hey, doctor oblivious!
I see below that you are coming to play! my prayers have been answered! now it will be hot! we will bring the keyboard and the amp. we'll be there at 7:00.
Reality Playings: Frank Moore w/dr oblivious
-
Export to a calendar- Location
-
511 48th Street
Oakland, CA 94609
510.526.7858How to find us
"I'll be on 'stage'."
- Who’s coming?
- 2 Yes / 6 Maybe
(RSVP deadline: March 21, 2009 4:00 PM)
Who organized?
dr oblivious
Years ago, when I first came across an essay by Frank Moore, I knew I'd end up at one of his shows eventually. When I moved the Bay Area, I knew it was just a matter of time before I'd work with Frank. That time ended up being a series of shows at UC Berkley in 2003. I've been working with him and his troops ever since.
Then there's also the fact he's one of the "perverted artists" that Jessie Helms went after for receiving National Endowment for the Arts funding once.
What can you expect? Um, that would be telling. What you should be aware of is nudity and sexual themes. Also Frank films all of his shows and broadcasts parts of them on his public access show on Berkley cable. This is an audience participation event.
You can explore his website to learn more about him.
Check out the flyer.
This event is free but donations will be gladly accepted.
Talk about this Meetup
-
AmyMme DilettanteI think those of you who are going might want to devise a plan to meet somewhere before the show because dr. oblivious will be part of it. -
KristyDo we have to get nekkid for this ? Wait, don't tell me...because if you say no I will want to go, but if you say yes I will most definitely want to go!! Not sure what to expect but I'm looking forward to this. -
Brian BonhamI've seen Frank Moore once. Very cool. That man should be an example to other people who have to deal with disabilities.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
RE: TONIGHT ON HTTP://WWW.LUVER.COM
"THEN, AFTER THESE 2 SHOWS...I'LL DIE!...MAYBE!"
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
* * * * *
[Rafael-alexandre Ramos wrote:]
What are you saying, you'll die ?
You're allready eternel ( well, at least to me, and probably to a bunch of people too :)
I'll make it to California someday, Frank...In the mean time, Spring arrived in Montréal !!! :P
Toute mon amitié :)
* * * * *
ok! I will never die!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
New Show on LUVeR! Steve Martin's Backstage Country
Steve Martin's Backstage Country
http://www.luver.com/backstagecountry.html
Every Wednesday at 4:30pm pacific on http://www.luver.com ...
starts this Wednesday, March 18, 2009!
Steve Martin's Backstage Country
Steve Martin's www.backstagecountry.podomatic.com features audio
interviews with some of the brightest stars in Nashville and Beyond.Many new
shows recorded in Nashville coming very soon!!!
http://www.luver.com/backstagecountry.html
Every Wednesday at 4:30pm pacific on http://www.luver.com ...
starts this Wednesday, March 18, 2009!
Steve Martin's Backstage Country
Steve Martin's www.backstagecountry.podomatic.com features audio
interviews with some of the brightest stars in Nashville and Beyond.Many new
shows recorded in Nashville coming very soon!!!
Friday, March 13, 2009
last night
We have survived the first double-header of The Shaman’s Den Sunday…over 6 hours of conversation. And not superficial chitchat either! Both babes have lived rich lives committed to social change. And they came ready to delve deeply. In one way, this made my job easy. No pulling/dragging things out, no padding. But it was so intense! There was so much to cover! Christ, these two are heroes…and they are not done. Afterwards I was spiritually inspired, but physically fried!
And in Penny’s case, it is the beginning of a long relationship. I am not sure “beginning” is the right word. She said she and I are the same person in two [or more] bodies. If that is true, we will continue our old relationship!
JEN:
The first Shaman's Den started and we were blown away by Marjorie Swan Edwin and her history as a peace activist. Her stories went back to WWI and she was in jail several times for standing up for her convictions. She was solid on her belief that peace could change the world, that non-violence would end war. She had a violent father and knew that this violence was being passed down from past generations. She wanted to stop that cycle so there were a couple of people in her childhood that taught her peace and she followed that. She had amazing stories about protesting the war tax by not doing her taxes since before 1950! And how she just trusted and remained open and transparent about it, and how that basically kept her out of trouble with the IRS. She saw everything like the fight against segregation and gay rights as being a part of the same bigger picture of peace. She was of a time when all of that was treated as the same fight. Then to hear about her husband now and their disagreement on gay rights was a real trip. You read her Frank's platform and she loved it and said he should run for Governor. Can't wait to hear more of her stories. Saw that you rebooked her to be on the show again.
Then Penny got here and she ate a little something while the boyz were telling her the story of how the blue house became what it is today. We gave her a little tour of the downstairs and then it was time for her to come down to the ph for the show. What an amazing night! It was incredible to hear how similar her experiences and stories of the 'art world' were to Frank's. They've been working in the same circles for years so it's not surprising that she knew who Frank was. The talk about art and life was real and grounded. It fleshed out a lot of what we had experienced at her performance a few nights ago, about how all these little groups have emerged that just isolate everyone further when we should really all be coming together and realizing that we are all just people no matter what our sexuality or sexual preference or skin color or culture or whatever. She talks raw and she sees Frank, sees what he has built, sees us together and how important that is. You both talked like a winding river, non-linear and dancing. Her talk about the younger generation feeling entitled rather than having to earn respect hit home, as well as her talk about art school and art as a career. She said that art is not a career, it's a vocation and you really need a mentor or just to do it for a long time, not thinking that you can make money off of it, just doing it and honing it and learning about it. You read her that crazy letter from the woman who worked at High Performance magazine and it sounded even more crazy than ever. It sounded psycho! She did a great Quentin Crisp impersonation. It was really great to have her here and we all thought the show was too short. It was fuel.
The boyz went down to drive her home, and then when I came down after that to talk about the shows you said that she said she's ready to move in. Frank said there's room! She took a copy of Cherotic Magic and said she was going to study this, 'Frank's mystery school'. It was an amazing night for sure. History in the making. The first double header!
DA BOYZ:
Wow ... only part 1 of an historic Shaman's Den double-header ... first up, lifelong activist, pacifist, war protestor, founding member of the Committee for Non Violent Action ... it was amazing to hear her talk about an uncompromising life in opposition to war and to the operations of the state, and the stories around her refusal to pay taxes, and many other things. Meanwhile, there was a lot of veggie prep for the baked veggies, saving camshots, and then the two of us left about an hour into the show, to go pick up Penny! Later, Jen told us some of what we missed ... the reading of Frank's platform, and how much Marjorie liked it, and suggested he run for governor! And how much she enjoyed being on the show, and would like to come back!
We were to meet Penny at Udupi Palace, an Indian restaurant on Valencia ... we were right on time, but Penny and three friends had really only just sat down to eat ... Penny had been getting her hair done, and it had gone late, plus there has been a long wait at the restaurant... They were just starting on their lassis when we arrived. Penny introduced us to everyone. It was an Indian man, and a younger woman sitting next to Penny, and one of the pastors from Grace Cathedral, ("third in command", Penny said) where earlier that day, Penny later told us that they had talked about her show during the Homily! The woman pastor she introduced us to had come to see Penny's show 4 times! They had known each other for several months now ... the part of the show we think she said they were referring to in the Homily was about "judgment" ... how people will always judge you ... "If you're afraid of getting up to dance because someone will judge you, they will. Because it takes the spotlight off of them to put it on you." Penny was talking Frank way up to the folks at the table, and the woman next to her asked us what Frank taught to apprentices? We said life! Penny kept talking about Frank and how he inspired her, and how they should all check him out, and should watch her on the show that night. We told them how to tune in ...
When we got into the car, Penny was thrilled to be riding in one of the tie-dye cars! She had seen them online. The pastor came out and took pictures of Penny in the car! Then we were soon heading off down Valencia toward the freeway. Penny was talking to us nonstop the whole ride ... we were a little worried that she would talk about stuff to us, that she wouldn't then tell Frank, but there was no need to worry .... she actually talked about everything she had said to us with Frank on the show, and then went deeper into it! She is amazing ... so fun to talk with, to just listen to ... At one point, she said that some people that she has talked to about Frank assume that he is "queer" because he is disabled ... and she tells them she doesn't think so ... she asked us if Frank was straight, heterosexual, if we would identify as that ... We said that Frank never talks about himself in those terms, but -- (we were about to say that Frank always says he is a lesbian in a man's body!) Penny said, well, I know he likes women!
Back here at the BH, we set Penny up with the take-out that she had brought with her from the restaurant, and we were telling her how the Blue House came to be, the story of Roy, the brothers, Granny, etc.! She loved the story, and really loved the house, loved all the colors, and loved Frank's paintings! We started on a house tour, but only got through the downstairs before it was time for the show. She was talking about how much she loved thrifting, and had been doing a lot of it while she was here in SF. Someone told her that the place to thrift was San Leandro, so she was going to check that out next time she was here!
Then the show was starting!! One of the most amazing Shaman's Den shows ever ... there are so many ways in which it was amazing ... one of the things which struck us over and over again was how similar Penny's experiences with the "art world" and in general are to Frank's experiences, and how similar the way that they approach things. It was very intense the way that Penny absorbed everything Frank was saying, and how deeply she saw and recognized what Frank does and how deeply she appreciated it .... and how her own art/life was oriented in this way as well. It was really striking to hear how Penny does what Frank does in trying to break down barriers, fragmentation, separation in her art, and how she does that .... the amazing stories from her life and art ... Hearing Linda Burnham's letter again was intense!! Alexi said later that it was a lot different hearing it now than the experience of hearing it years earlier ... now you can see how her attitude has been so solidified into the "art world" that Alexi said that someone like her now, in the position she was in then, would never even talk to Frank today ...
We just loved Penny's humor, her gutsy, no nonsense directness, her practicality and honesty and laser sharpness seeing through things, so much like Frank ... It was really neat how she said she could do one of Frank's performances and Frank said he could do hers ... we could really see that! There was such a feeling of closeness and possibilities ... Corey saved over 100 camshots, because every single one was alive! After we dropped Penny off later in SF, we were talking about how amazing it was to connect with someone like Penny, and it creates a feeling of a lot of possibilities, of expansion, deepening of this .... We loved what Penny said about "entitlement" vs. earning it! And what she said about how people who work in the arts should be serving the artists or they should just kill themselves!
When the show finally ended, only because of time!, we said it could have just gone on and on ... as if it had just begun!
When we came down with the food and to take Penny home, the feeling of Penny with Frank, and all of us was so intensely affectionate and fun, deep and direct. We loved how Penny danced with Frank, saying she was diving deep into the roots of Frank's shamanistic tree!!
When we got into the car, Penny was going on and on about how incredible it was to meet and talk with Frank, what an amazing person he is ... She said that Frank was fucking amazing, and Linda was fucking fucking amazing, and Mikee was fucking amazing! And we two were fucking amazing, and that if you follow that logic, then the girl from Toronto, Jen, must be fucking amazing! She was saying, "So this is Berkeley ... " She liked it ... she was talking about the documentary about Frank, how it really needed to be done, that people needed to see the way we all live, to see what is possible. She asked us if we two were "tied to the hip". Yep! And what our ages were, and where we grew up ... She asked about Frank's brother, and Connie ... She said she must have said, "Wow, crazy!" like 50 times that night! She was getting really tired, and her voice was going ... She was telling us about Steve, and how he does construction, is a carpenter, and was trained as an architect. At one point, she had tried to get the apartment of Jack Smith moved. She had been with him up until his death. His apartment was an art piece, every wall handpainted by him ... she had consulted with Steve about how they could remove the walls to set up somewhere else as a museum ... it was going to cost $40,000! When she first met Steve, she was about to have some tile work done in her place ... the guy who came over to bid the job was also trying to take her out, and he was going to charge her $1,500 for a very small tile job. Steve happened to be coming over the same day to show her his video work, and she was freaking out about the tiling guy. She told Steve the whole thing, and he offered to do the work for $300, and he did a great job! She said he is from Iowa, and really likes being from Iowa, being a "real person"! She said that her and Steve do a lot of the fliering in NYC, but it is illegal now. She said that this happened because of the corporatization of everything ... we told her that we do the fliering here, and that the same thing is happening. And finally we were at the place where she was staying in Noe Valley ... She had said that she heard that Alexi was a great cook, and was looking forward to eating his food next time she is here!
We were soon driving back home again, taking a circuitous route to the freeway to avoid possible back-ups, but there was very little traffic anyway ... We were talking about how amazing the night was .... how amazing it was to connect with Penny, and how overdue a documentary about Frank was!! Penny was commenting about how great it will be to do this because of the amazing amount of material that we have on Frank.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
The happy provocateur
The happy provocateur
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=theatre&article=495
Penny Arcade personifies 'Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!'
Published 02/26/2009
by Richard Dodds
The name she chose for herself suggests nostalgic frivolity. The name she chose for her signature show suggests anything but. And so we have Penny Arcade starring in Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, a show that has played around the world since its creation in 1990, but has somehow missed San Francisco.
That omission is finally being rectified at the Brava Theater Center through March 7, where the New York icon and a troupe of locally recruited dancers are encouraging audience members, in Penny Arcade's words, to "be yourself, be even more yourself, be outrageous in your selfdom."
The diminutive but combustible performer, born 58 years ago as Susana Ventura, was sitting in a chilly office at Brava before beginning rehearsals. As a gritty New Yorker with a haughty disdain for all things Californian, she had never even visited the city until about 10 years ago. "Now that New York is totally gentrified," she said, "San Francisco seems wild and untamed and endlessly huge, with so much diversity."
Calling herself "a working-class intellectual," Ventura spent her adolescence both in reform school and on the streets of New York where, guided and protected by drag queens and gay men, she was calling herself a fag hag before she was legally allowed to buy a drink. In the pre-Stonewall world of Greenwich Village, that didn't stop her from finding her muses in gay bars.
"My goal every night was to get to sit at the table with the old queens," she said. "They were sophisticated. They had the fiercest wit. Sadly, we no longer live in an intergenerational world, and I'm kind of a bridge between the 1960s and 2000s."
Her teenage contacts led to work with John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous and a role in the Andy Warhol-Paul Morrissey movie Women in Revolt. She went on to work with many underground theater artists including Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and Hibiscus' Angels of Light. She was also a close friend of Quentin Crisp, and the two created a long-running performance/interview piece.
Ventura is working on a new solo show titled Old Queens, and as with Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, it is being developed through improvisational performances. "What people will see in San Francisco is the organic result of five years of improvised work in front of audiences," she said. "It all started in 1990 when I submitted it to the NEA during the Sen. Helms censorship crisis. It was me kind of saying, 'Fuck you' to them."
Penny Arcade did not receive a grant from the NEA, but Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! has taken her to Australia and Britain, where the show was embraced by the mainstream press, as well as a long off-off-Broadway run in the 1990s. She returned to the piece in 2006 as a live event presented by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
"I added six sentences, at the most, and much to my shock and chagrin, people thought it was written that year," she said. "A goodly portion of the audience was over 40, and you could feel how they felt about their experiences being acknowledged. Anyone under 43 years old came of age in an era of entitlement, that you are entitled to respect. People over 43 came of age in an era when you had to earn respect and authenticity."
A lot of those people, Ventura's friends and mentors, died of AIDS, and she broke into tears as she talked about the loss. "I believe I have a duty to the young people to talk about those people who were so brave and created the possibilities that exist now, and for what they did for me. My great achievement is that I'm a real person and not just some lame diva, so I'm proud that I can cry."
She waved off the offer of a tissue, and quickly composed herself. "Lest anybody get the wrong idea," she said, "Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! is a comedy. You'll laugh and you'll cry, and we have real erotic dancers, boys and girls, who are in the audience and who the audience gets to know very well. This is not just some cheerful burlesque."
In several of the scenes, Ventura portrays characters who work in the sex industry. "The show opens with a phone-sex girl, which is based on real conversations I had with clients when I did the phones in whorehouses. And I play a prostitute named Charlene who was a friend of mine and who is extremely funny, and she talks about prostitution in ways that whores talk
about prostitution among themselves."
The production also includes Ventura stripping while a video of the late actor Ron Vawter reading from Lenny Bruce's monologue about obscenity is projected behind her, and a segment in which she moves through the audience improvising on current events in her life and in the world. And then there is what she calls "a big dance break" in which the audience takes over the stage.
"It happened spontaneously one night in 1992, and now we make it happen," she said. "But this is a safe space. I tell the audience that if they do not feel like dancing, that is fine with us. However, if the reason you're not getting up to dance is you're afraid that people are going to look at you and judge, well, that's what people do."
Ventura calls herself "a bisexual fag hag," terms she knows haven't always been embraced by others. She is currently married, though living separately, from musician Chris Rael of the band Church of Betty. "I fell in love with him," she said, "because of who he is as a person, and not because he is a male."
While the performer known as Penny Arcade happily claims descriptions as a reformer and provocateur, she insists that, despite a reputation she acknowledged that follows her, she is not confrontational. "I've often wondered what it is in expressing my opinion that makes some people think I want them to agree with me. They think they're being bullied, and I don't give a shit whether anyone agrees with me or not. I want to be free to express my opinion, and I think, by maintaining my position in my work and for doing it for so long, I've earned that right."
--
Richard Dodds can be reached at BARstage@comcast.net.
* * * * *
great show! we are going back tonight!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
http://www.ebar.com/arts/art_article.php?sec=theatre&article=495
Penny Arcade personifies 'Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!'
Published 02/26/2009
by Richard Dodds
The name she chose for herself suggests nostalgic frivolity. The name she chose for her signature show suggests anything but. And so we have Penny Arcade starring in Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, a show that has played around the world since its creation in 1990, but has somehow missed San Francisco.
That omission is finally being rectified at the Brava Theater Center through March 7, where the New York icon and a troupe of locally recruited dancers are encouraging audience members, in Penny Arcade's words, to "be yourself, be even more yourself, be outrageous in your selfdom."
The diminutive but combustible performer, born 58 years ago as Susana Ventura, was sitting in a chilly office at Brava before beginning rehearsals. As a gritty New Yorker with a haughty disdain for all things Californian, she had never even visited the city until about 10 years ago. "Now that New York is totally gentrified," she said, "San Francisco seems wild and untamed and endlessly huge, with so much diversity."
Calling herself "a working-class intellectual," Ventura spent her adolescence both in reform school and on the streets of New York where, guided and protected by drag queens and gay men, she was calling herself a fag hag before she was legally allowed to buy a drink. In the pre-Stonewall world of Greenwich Village, that didn't stop her from finding her muses in gay bars.
"My goal every night was to get to sit at the table with the old queens," she said. "They were sophisticated. They had the fiercest wit. Sadly, we no longer live in an intergenerational world, and I'm kind of a bridge between the 1960s and 2000s."
Her teenage contacts led to work with John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous and a role in the Andy Warhol-Paul Morrissey movie Women in Revolt. She went on to work with many underground theater artists including Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, and Hibiscus' Angels of Light. She was also a close friend of Quentin Crisp, and the two created a long-running performance/interview piece.
Ventura is working on a new solo show titled Old Queens, and as with Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, it is being developed through improvisational performances. "What people will see in San Francisco is the organic result of five years of improvised work in front of audiences," she said. "It all started in 1990 when I submitted it to the NEA during the Sen. Helms censorship crisis. It was me kind of saying, 'Fuck you' to them."
Penny Arcade did not receive a grant from the NEA, but Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! has taken her to Australia and Britain, where the show was embraced by the mainstream press, as well as a long off-off-Broadway run in the 1990s. She returned to the piece in 2006 as a live event presented by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.
"I added six sentences, at the most, and much to my shock and chagrin, people thought it was written that year," she said. "A goodly portion of the audience was over 40, and you could feel how they felt about their experiences being acknowledged. Anyone under 43 years old came of age in an era of entitlement, that you are entitled to respect. People over 43 came of age in an era when you had to earn respect and authenticity."
A lot of those people, Ventura's friends and mentors, died of AIDS, and she broke into tears as she talked about the loss. "I believe I have a duty to the young people to talk about those people who were so brave and created the possibilities that exist now, and for what they did for me. My great achievement is that I'm a real person and not just some lame diva, so I'm proud that I can cry."
She waved off the offer of a tissue, and quickly composed herself. "Lest anybody get the wrong idea," she said, "Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! is a comedy. You'll laugh and you'll cry, and we have real erotic dancers, boys and girls, who are in the audience and who the audience gets to know very well. This is not just some cheerful burlesque."
In several of the scenes, Ventura portrays characters who work in the sex industry. "The show opens with a phone-sex girl, which is based on real conversations I had with clients when I did the phones in whorehouses. And I play a prostitute named Charlene who was a friend of mine and who is extremely funny, and she talks about prostitution in ways that whores talk
about prostitution among themselves."
The production also includes Ventura stripping while a video of the late actor Ron Vawter reading from Lenny Bruce's monologue about obscenity is projected behind her, and a segment in which she moves through the audience improvising on current events in her life and in the world. And then there is what she calls "a big dance break" in which the audience takes over the stage.
"It happened spontaneously one night in 1992, and now we make it happen," she said. "But this is a safe space. I tell the audience that if they do not feel like dancing, that is fine with us. However, if the reason you're not getting up to dance is you're afraid that people are going to look at you and judge, well, that's what people do."
Ventura calls herself "a bisexual fag hag," terms she knows haven't always been embraced by others. She is currently married, though living separately, from musician Chris Rael of the band Church of Betty. "I fell in love with him," she said, "because of who he is as a person, and not because he is a male."
While the performer known as Penny Arcade happily claims descriptions as a reformer and provocateur, she insists that, despite a reputation she acknowledged that follows her, she is not confrontational. "I've often wondered what it is in expressing my opinion that makes some people think I want them to agree with me. They think they're being bullied, and I don't give a shit whether anyone agrees with me or not. I want to be free to express my opinion, and I think, by maintaining my position in my work and for doing it for so long, I've earned that right."
--
Richard Dodds can be reached at BARstage@comcast.net.
* * * * *
great show! we are going back tonight!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Sunday, March 8, 2009
TONIGHT ON HTTP://WWW.LUVER.COM
i'm doing a first in the 11-year history of the shaman's den! i'm doing a live double header!
first up...at 8pm pacific time it is Marjorie Swann Edwin, a founding member of the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), a radical pacifist organization formed in 1957 to resist the US Government’s program of nuclear weapons testing. http://rcnv.org/202 To tune into this live, video show, go to http://www.luver.com/listen.html and click on "watch here".
and then at about 10:30pm Pacific Time, everything will be expanded when "the queen of the underground" Penny Arcade will join me...comparing notes from our lifetimes of cultural subversion! you on the e-salon know how special this will be!
THEN, AFTER THESE 2 SHOWS...I'LL DIE!...MAYBE!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
first up...at 8pm pacific time it is Marjorie Swann Edwin, a founding member of the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), a radical pacifist organization formed in 1957 to resist the US Government’s program of nuclear weapons testing. http://rcnv.org/202 To tune into this live, video show, go to http://www.luver.com/listen.html and click on "watch here".
and then at about 10:30pm Pacific Time, everything will be expanded when "the queen of the underground" Penny Arcade will join me...comparing notes from our lifetimes of cultural subversion! you on the e-salon know how special this will be!
THEN, AFTER THESE 2 SHOWS...I'LL DIE!...MAYBE!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
last night's show of penny arcade...even better!
when we got home last night from penny's show, we watched 20 to Life: The Life and Times of John Sinclair (2007)...a great documentary! it was fitting because it was john [a frequent guest on my show, a luver dj, an elector/endorser of my presidential campaign, and who donated his whole music library to luver] was the one who forwarded me penny's email about her show. after i forwarded it out, i put it in my trash. but i kept thinking about inviting her to be a guest on my show...it was a long shot...but fuck it!...i went into my trash and emailed her. she wrote back! she knew my work! this week has been a process of penny, her director steve, and i trying to get her here, working against the flu, time, etc. it still may happen late sunday night or monday night. but the process revealed we 3 share the same life and philosophy as art outsiders, using the same tactics and performance tools, facing the same issues and boxes. anytime such outsiders meet one another, THINGS HAPPEN!
last night's show was even better than opening night. the dancers were more relaxed, hence even hotter and sexier. penny's riffs were expanded, deeper, more intense...partly because there was more of a p.c.-uptightness undercurrent in the audience that she could play with. even more satisfying!
and again miss muffy danced with me during the dance free-for-all! but this time the other dancer nina and one of the guy dancers krowe joined our steamy circle as did a hot babe from the audience. really during the show whenever the guy dancers needed someone to play with, they came to me...because i'm always ready to play. that's a secret of getting hot babes of whatever gender!
DA BOYZ:
From the very beginning of the show, it was just so much fun. Watching all the great sexy dancers, guys and girls, dancing throughout the theater, rotating their positions as people filed in ... taking turns, one by one, doing a kind of solo to each new song ... Linda pointed out Miss Muffy to us, who was going to be on a future Shaman's Den ... all of the dancers were amazing, but she was definitely one of our favorites!! Everything was just exciting, turned on, fun ... And all this before Penny even came into the room ...
It was really neat the way that Penny interacted with Frank throughout the performance ... there were some moments that were intensely deep and focused between them that just gave us chills. Linda had handed her Frank's book of poems and Art of a Shaman before the show, and she had already started reading it ... you could feel the real affinity and connection that she and Frank have, and the whole performance really showed that too ... there was a lot that reminded us of Frank, and of the feeling of us, and of our performances ... a feeling of being on the edge with her, taken on a journey with her, having fun with her in the moment, the way she "jammed", improvised ... and the way she kept driving things, ideas, concepts home .... and the way it felt like she brought everyone together in the process ....
It was really fun to dance with the dancers, and everyone else in the audience up onstage, and watching Miss Muffy, Nina and others dance with Frank. He was busy!! The way that the dancers were with the audience was really neat, soft, personal, direct ... totally changing, transforming the standard perception of an erotic dancer ... And it was really neat to see them all in their street clothes at the end ... it humanized everything, and made you feel like all of us were sexy dancers, and anyone could be ... and all the next day we wondered who, in the course of a day, walking around in their street clothes, might be an erotic dancer?? It felt like it melted a lot of things together ...
Alexi said he had tears in his eyes from almost the very beginning, because everything Penny was saying was so deep, direct, personal ... We loved being in the dark theater with her! There is so much we have been talking about in the performance, its hard to remember all of it ... Penny is so funny too!! And we were saying afterward that, like Frank, she weaves a powerful message nonlinearly and is sneaky ... using the fun, the dancing, the nudity, the eroticism, the skits and personal history to carry these ideas into you ... It was really neat the way Penny talked about pc, self-censorship, the way she likened the climate in the U.S. to the way things were in Germany before the Nazis came to power ... the way she really got underneath a lot of different eras and the current state of things ...
It was really neat talking with Steve after the show ... how again you could feel such a deep affinity between him and Penny and Frank ... how much he and Penny valued the consistency, the long term relationships, staying "outsiders" ... very similar experiences. It was a trip to hear about what has happened in New York City, and how they see the Bay Area as having the last cracks of freedom in the corporate take-over, the gentrification of everything ...
And then Frank talking with Krowe, Nina, Muffy ... lining up shows! What an amazing fun night, and a feeling of very deep connections ... We were some of the last to leave.
JEN:
The boyz were waiting for us at the theatre which was also decorated with a mix of the place it used to be and what it has become. We got in and waited for the show to start. Penny saw us and said hi then ran out to get false eyelashes. When she came back she had already been reading Art of a Shaman which we gave her and she was loving it. We were told that there were seats right up front for all of us. When the stage music came up loud we entered and saw all the erotic dancers doing their thing. It was awesome! We were figuring out where our seats were but I couldn't stop looking at all the beautiful bodies writhing around. We got settled in and really soaked the dancers in. All different body types colors sexes juicing the place up. They rotated and everyone of them had center stage for a song. They humped the stage, the poles, each other. They touched themselves and teased, shook and jiggled in joy. It was so much fun! They interacted with the audience dancing into them. It was great. And then Penny came down the aisle and she stopped at Frank. They communicated without words for a while giving each other meaningful looks and gestures. Then she got up on stage and started. She's a fireball, funny and smart, getting her ideas across by letting the audience in. She's direct and honest talking about sexual energy being the only one energy, talking about aids and the loss that created, talking about the gentrification of NY. She hits on so many things that need to change by exploring basic topics of being a bitch, dyke, faghag and whore, but all is entertwined into the bigger picture of life. She connects everything together with her wit and vulnerability. When she goes through the audience in the dark it feels good like we're friends with her just rapping about life together. She's so cute and sexy. She does a strip tease and then a political rant which is very powerful. All the time I'm thinking how sexy, how intense, how affective. And then I realize that we do that too, we bare all and Frank weaves everything into a sexy powerful experience. It is the same, and so I'm struck again with how lucky we are, how amazing this life is. The energy in the place was sexy and most of the audience got up to dance during the 3 song break. Frank had 3 babes getting down with him. People let loose and shook their stuff, inspired by the performance. When the erotic dancers came onstage at the end in their street clothes it really drove the fact home that all the sexy juicy energy was in everyone. All came full circle. It was a really great show.
When it was over we made our way out to the lobby. Penny talked to Frank telling him that she loves the part of his book she read that talks about following. She said that not many people do that anymore, but they do that. Kindred. We went out to the lobby and talked with several dancers and with Steve, Penny's partner. Everyone was warm and open. Frank asked Krowe to be on the Shaman's Den. Miss Muffy also confirmed that she'll be on the show soon. He told Nina that he liked her dancing and she was thrilled. Steve talked about the 'art scene' and how gross it all was now because the people are all careerists so it isn't about the art anymore. It was neat to hear the similar experiences Penny and Frank have had with that world. We were buzzing from the energy of the night, but we were getting tired and hungry. After most people left we made our way to the cars. Had a long wait to get on the bridge and talked about this and that during the traffic jam. Got home and had our pizza talking about how great the performance was and then we all passed out.
Was thinking about the performance last night all day today. How the sexy dancers really blew my mind because they blew away any pictures of what sexy looked like. It was a feeling, a juicy openess and vulnerability. And all that Penny said and did was there too, telling us her stories and weaving them into our lives when on the surface they could seem remote.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
last night's show was even better than opening night. the dancers were more relaxed, hence even hotter and sexier. penny's riffs were expanded, deeper, more intense...partly because there was more of a p.c.-uptightness undercurrent in the audience that she could play with. even more satisfying!
and again miss muffy danced with me during the dance free-for-all! but this time the other dancer nina and one of the guy dancers krowe joined our steamy circle as did a hot babe from the audience. really during the show whenever the guy dancers needed someone to play with, they came to me...because i'm always ready to play. that's a secret of getting hot babes of whatever gender!
DA BOYZ:
From the very beginning of the show, it was just so much fun. Watching all the great sexy dancers, guys and girls, dancing throughout the theater, rotating their positions as people filed in ... taking turns, one by one, doing a kind of solo to each new song ... Linda pointed out Miss Muffy to us, who was going to be on a future Shaman's Den ... all of the dancers were amazing, but she was definitely one of our favorites!! Everything was just exciting, turned on, fun ... And all this before Penny even came into the room ...
It was really neat the way that Penny interacted with Frank throughout the performance ... there were some moments that were intensely deep and focused between them that just gave us chills. Linda had handed her Frank's book of poems and Art of a Shaman before the show, and she had already started reading it ... you could feel the real affinity and connection that she and Frank have, and the whole performance really showed that too ... there was a lot that reminded us of Frank, and of the feeling of us, and of our performances ... a feeling of being on the edge with her, taken on a journey with her, having fun with her in the moment, the way she "jammed", improvised ... and the way she kept driving things, ideas, concepts home .... and the way it felt like she brought everyone together in the process ....
It was really fun to dance with the dancers, and everyone else in the audience up onstage, and watching Miss Muffy, Nina and others dance with Frank. He was busy!! The way that the dancers were with the audience was really neat, soft, personal, direct ... totally changing, transforming the standard perception of an erotic dancer ... And it was really neat to see them all in their street clothes at the end ... it humanized everything, and made you feel like all of us were sexy dancers, and anyone could be ... and all the next day we wondered who, in the course of a day, walking around in their street clothes, might be an erotic dancer?? It felt like it melted a lot of things together ...
Alexi said he had tears in his eyes from almost the very beginning, because everything Penny was saying was so deep, direct, personal ... We loved being in the dark theater with her! There is so much we have been talking about in the performance, its hard to remember all of it ... Penny is so funny too!! And we were saying afterward that, like Frank, she weaves a powerful message nonlinearly and is sneaky ... using the fun, the dancing, the nudity, the eroticism, the skits and personal history to carry these ideas into you ... It was really neat the way Penny talked about pc, self-censorship, the way she likened the climate in the U.S. to the way things were in Germany before the Nazis came to power ... the way she really got underneath a lot of different eras and the current state of things ...
It was really neat talking with Steve after the show ... how again you could feel such a deep affinity between him and Penny and Frank ... how much he and Penny valued the consistency, the long term relationships, staying "outsiders" ... very similar experiences. It was a trip to hear about what has happened in New York City, and how they see the Bay Area as having the last cracks of freedom in the corporate take-over, the gentrification of everything ...
And then Frank talking with Krowe, Nina, Muffy ... lining up shows! What an amazing fun night, and a feeling of very deep connections ... We were some of the last to leave.
JEN:
The boyz were waiting for us at the theatre which was also decorated with a mix of the place it used to be and what it has become. We got in and waited for the show to start. Penny saw us and said hi then ran out to get false eyelashes. When she came back she had already been reading Art of a Shaman which we gave her and she was loving it. We were told that there were seats right up front for all of us. When the stage music came up loud we entered and saw all the erotic dancers doing their thing. It was awesome! We were figuring out where our seats were but I couldn't stop looking at all the beautiful bodies writhing around. We got settled in and really soaked the dancers in. All different body types colors sexes juicing the place up. They rotated and everyone of them had center stage for a song. They humped the stage, the poles, each other. They touched themselves and teased, shook and jiggled in joy. It was so much fun! They interacted with the audience dancing into them. It was great. And then Penny came down the aisle and she stopped at Frank. They communicated without words for a while giving each other meaningful looks and gestures. Then she got up on stage and started. She's a fireball, funny and smart, getting her ideas across by letting the audience in. She's direct and honest talking about sexual energy being the only one energy, talking about aids and the loss that created, talking about the gentrification of NY. She hits on so many things that need to change by exploring basic topics of being a bitch, dyke, faghag and whore, but all is entertwined into the bigger picture of life. She connects everything together with her wit and vulnerability. When she goes through the audience in the dark it feels good like we're friends with her just rapping about life together. She's so cute and sexy. She does a strip tease and then a political rant which is very powerful. All the time I'm thinking how sexy, how intense, how affective. And then I realize that we do that too, we bare all and Frank weaves everything into a sexy powerful experience. It is the same, and so I'm struck again with how lucky we are, how amazing this life is. The energy in the place was sexy and most of the audience got up to dance during the 3 song break. Frank had 3 babes getting down with him. People let loose and shook their stuff, inspired by the performance. When the erotic dancers came onstage at the end in their street clothes it really drove the fact home that all the sexy juicy energy was in everyone. All came full circle. It was a really great show.
When it was over we made our way out to the lobby. Penny talked to Frank telling him that she loves the part of his book she read that talks about following. She said that not many people do that anymore, but they do that. Kindred. We went out to the lobby and talked with several dancers and with Steve, Penny's partner. Everyone was warm and open. Frank asked Krowe to be on the Shaman's Den. Miss Muffy also confirmed that she'll be on the show soon. He told Nina that he liked her dancing and she was thrilled. Steve talked about the 'art scene' and how gross it all was now because the people are all careerists so it isn't about the art anymore. It was neat to hear the similar experiences Penny and Frank have had with that world. We were buzzing from the energy of the night, but we were getting tired and hungry. After most people left we made our way to the cars. Had a long wait to get on the bridge and talked about this and that during the traffic jam. Got home and had our pizza talking about how great the performance was and then we all passed out.
Was thinking about the performance last night all day today. How the sexy dancers really blew my mind because they blew away any pictures of what sexy looked like. It was a feeling, a juicy openess and vulnerability. And all that Penny said and did was there too, telling us her stories and weaving them into our lives when on the surface they could seem remote.
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
RE: THE DR. SUSAN BLOCK SHOW on BTV, Ch.28 & Ch.24, March-April 2009
Thanks so much Linda and Frank! BTV is even more precious to us now that we’ve lost ALL of our stations in LA.
Xxxo Suzy
Susan M. Block, Ph.D.
Susan M. Block, Ph.D.
* * * * *
ah, yes...makes the mere incompetence of btv seem heavenly! we have been carrying around an issue of the l.a. weekly because it listed our performance. yesterday we just noticed and read the cover story/expose of the shutting down of public access...and your great photo!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Orgasm
(from Stavros:)
I had surgery on my nose. The doctor said that when I came out of the anesthesia my muscles tightened and I was breathing rapidly. They put me back under anesthesia and injected muscles relaxants. The next two hours were spend saving me.
I realize after I came home that it was an organism. That is typical for me when I have an orgasm and is one reason why I practice non orgasmic sex. After my brother died during an orgasm I thought it would be in my interest to control my orgasms. However when I think of it I can’t think of a better way to depart from this earth. If I died after that operation my obituary would have read “Stavros went out in a wet dream.”
* * * * *
oh, yes, those orgasms can be fatal...but!
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
In Freedom,
Frank Moore
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Monday on a Shaman's Den's Special
Frank Moore's Shaman's Den
Monday, March 2, 2008
Penny Arcade
http://www.pennyarcade.tv/
To tune into this live, video show, go to http://www.luver.com/listen.html
and click on "watch here".
Show starts at 8pm Pacific Time
About Penny Arcade’s
BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!
“In a world where "bad girl" has become a marketing ploy applied to the likes of Britney Spears, New York performance artist and social satirist Penny Arcade is the real thing.” – The Sydney Morning Herald
“The show is everything you ever wanted to know about censorship, feminism, counterculture and joy – without speaking about any of those things.” – Rolling Stone Magazine
Penny Arcade was recently featured in the Weimar, NY Series presented at SF MOMA, February 2008. Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected writer, actress and director. Penny Arcade debuted with John Vaccaro's explosive Playhouse of The Ridiculous at 17 years of age, and was a Warhol Factory superstar at 19, featured in the Warhol film "Women In Revolt. In 1991 the great Quentin Crisp chose Penny Arcade as the woman he most identified with naming her his Anima Figure and their friendship became professional as they undertook many performances together right up till one month before his death at age 91. For the first time, Arcade world renowned performance piece, “BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!” comes to San Francisco!!!
Monday, March 2, 2008
Penny Arcade
http://www.pennyarcade.tv/
To tune into this live, video show, go to http://www.luver.com/listen.html
and click on "watch here".
Show starts at 8pm Pacific Time
About Penny Arcade’s
BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!
“In a world where "bad girl" has become a marketing ploy applied to the likes of Britney Spears, New York performance artist and social satirist Penny Arcade is the real thing.” – The Sydney Morning Herald
“The show is everything you ever wanted to know about censorship, feminism, counterculture and joy – without speaking about any of those things.” – Rolling Stone Magazine
Penny Arcade was recently featured in the Weimar, NY Series presented at SF MOMA, February 2008. Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected writer, actress and director. Penny Arcade debuted with John Vaccaro's explosive Playhouse of The Ridiculous at 17 years of age, and was a Warhol Factory superstar at 19, featured in the Warhol film "Women In Revolt. In 1991 the great Quentin Crisp chose Penny Arcade as the woman he most identified with naming her his Anima Figure and their friendship became professional as they undertook many performances together right up till one month before his death at age 91. For the first time, Arcade world renowned performance piece, “BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!” comes to San Francisco!!!
A GREAT SHOW!
As those who know me/us well, I don’t go to shows much…like almost never….except for our performances. It takes days for us to prepare to go out…then days afterward to recover…and I’m usually painfully disappointed at what we see…not to mention our lack of money. Moreover, we have the bands, hottest acts coming to our house for THE SHAMAN’S DEN each week…like Sunday’s band, Corsica, has members who have played with Dizzy Gillespie and the bassist for Jimi Hendrix. So why go out?But we did last night! We went to Penny Arcade’s BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE! To put it simply it is one of the five “best” live performances I have ever seen. I knew, or had a feeling, it wasn’t much of a risk…not because of her titles of WARHOL’S SUPERSTAR, THE QUEEN OF THE UNDERGROUND, etc….those would be normally bad omens! But Penny and I have been emailing about her coming over. She emails like a grounded person who shares my excitement about getting together with someone who has been doing the same work. And the below photo sealed our going.
The ticket guy on the phone off-handedly said we should get there a half hour before “show time” to catch the pre-show goings-on with erotic dancers. In spite of our normal challenges getting out of the house, we got there about an hour early. Just tell me “erotic dancers!” One advantage of being in a wheelchair is you are let into performance areas early…which is like being backstage! We are front row kinds of people, ready for action…people think sitting in the back is safer! Anyway, Penny walked out into the space before the doors were opened to check things out. She was in street clothes. When we saw each other, we hugged as fellow warriors/players/misfits. Then she went to piss before the show. Meanwhile about 15 dancers in different sexy costumes came in and took positions both on the stage and in the mist of the seats. Both genders, all body types, races, etc. All hot! They started dancing erotically, hot! During their 45 minute dancing period, they rotated their positions after each song. After 10 minutes the doors were opened and the audience started coming in [SO GET THERE EARLY!]. Frankly it was visually and erotically overwhelming! During the show, each dancer became a person to us. At a certain point, Penny walked back into the theater. She was still in her street clothes. So most people didn’t know she was PENNY ARCADE…just a middle aged woman trying to make contact with people, going up to people in the audience. But I was the first she came up to. We did our thing together….but a guy in a wheelchair and a middle aged woman…but all that changed when she climbed up onto the stage!
The show is Penny. And Penny is funny, warm, sexy, erotic, kick-ass, political, subversive, plain talking, nude, up-lifting, real, wise, entertaining, committed, outsider, humane, community-building, rich history…and a damn good artist! We are going back next week! Btw, be prepared to dance! I loved dancing with Miss Muffy!
And PENNY ARCADE will be my guest on a special edition of THE SHAMAN'S DEN this Monday at 8pm pt.on http://www.luver.com !
* * * * *
Penny Arcade’s
BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE! (Regional Premiere)
Written and Created by Penny Arcade
February 25 – March 7, 2009 at 8pm
Tickets $20-$50
“In a world where "bad girl" has become a marketing ploy applied to the likes of Britney Spears, New York performance artist and social satirist Penny Arcade is the real thing.” – The Sydney Morning Herald
“The show is everything you ever wanted to know about censorship, feminism, counterculture and joy – without speaking about any of those things.” – Rolling Stone Magazine
Penny Arcade was recently featured in the Weimar, NY Series presented at SF MOMA, February 2008. Arcade aka Susana Ventura is an internationally respected writer, actress and director. Penny Arcade debuted with John Vaccaro's explosive Playhouse of The Ridiculous at 17 years of age, and was a Warhol Factory superstar at 19, featured in the Warhol film "Women In Revolt. In 1991 the great Quentin Crisp chose Penny Arcade as the woman he most identified with naming her his Anima Figure and their friendship became professional as they undertook many performances together right up till one month before his death at age 91. For the first time, Arcade world renowned performance piece, “BITCH! DYKE! FAGHAG! WHORE!” comes to San Francisco!!!
Sunday on the Shaman's Den
Frank Moore's Shaman's Den
Sunday, March 1, 2008
Corsica
www.corsicaband.com
To tune into this live, video show, go to http://www.luver.com/listen.html
and click on "watch here".
Show starts at 8pm Pacific Time
Sunday, March 1, 2008
Corsica
www.corsicaband.com
To tune into this live, video show, go to http://www.luver.com/listen.html
and click on "watch here".
Show starts at 8pm Pacific Time
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