Karen Finley: “Make Love” Laurie Beechman Theatre at the Westbank Cafe
Reviewed by David Roberts (See Joseph's "Jolt" below.)
Things have not gone all that well for New York City since September 11, 2001. Life after that mind-twisting event has been, at best, challenging and, for many, impossible to navigate. Karen Finley has returned to the scene of the tragedy with her 2003 “Make Love” at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. In this ninety-minute (the running time might vary from performance to performance), Karen Finley shakes the audience’s collective unconscious into reflective responsibility for the future.
As always, Finley is the consummate performance artist using every tool in her arsenal of mind-stretching antics to not only get the attention of the audience but to recruit the audience into some meaningful response. This artist knows her work is not for everyone. At one point in Saturday’s performance she suggested that if what she was doing was not clear to some, they might tune out until the songs.
Not everything is always completely accessible in performance art but what is clear in Finley’s work is that she is a wordsmith. When she takes to her script to either read from it or use it to remind her of something, she is at her best. It is then raw emotion floods the stage and the performance space. One often finds oneself at those moments leaning back a bit or grabbing something for balance and safety. The other bits are fun, too, and often deliciously disturbing, including the faux sex acts.
Being in the presence of creativity is not always the safest place to be because one might not come out on the other end the same person who sat down and ordered drinks just a short time earlier. I suppose no one “needs” to do anything. Who am I to tell you that you need to see something I liked? But you do need to experience “Make Love” at the Laurie Beechman. Who knows if or when she might return? Who knows the next time Karen Finley might kiss you on the cheek. I wish Karen would not only kiss me on the cheek, but whisper in my ear and tell me what the hell to do to make the pain of September 11 to go away. But, as she shared on Saturday, all she really can do is be with us. She cannot take us back to the garden; she cannot shield us from what she calls the “national torture S&M chamber.”
The following stream-of-consciousness review is dedicated to Karen Finley in gratitude for her performance.
Maybe this time we will get it right. Maybe this time our fragile island will rise up from the ashes (one more time) and not have to die again. Maybe. Karen Finley loves this small island, even Forty-second Street (though the old one might have been better). She and her iconic symbols of Manhattan gathered at the West Bank on that iconic street and challenged us to not just remember September 11th ten years past but to make love to that sleepless city. Liza was there in multiples (who was that Liza Number 2?) and the twin towers showed up dressed up as a bag-person nonetheless. Then there were others once down but now up looking to writhe up from that post-apocalyptic nightmare, searching for metaphors and other figurative stuff to try to understand what happened then, what’s happening now. We the others: we the people after all. Not Bush or his cohorts or successors. We, us, those gathered at the Beechman, Laurie’s place. We do not need to be other’s anxiety; those from outside our city who pity and ask ridiculous questions (“So, where were you when it happened?”). We do not need to hear platitudes from those who “care” about what happened. We just need to be here now with all the Liza’s, with Karen Finley, with all the symbols of graceful re-birth from tragedy. Today is always a good day for a tragedy but one was enough.
"Joseph's Jolt" by Joseph Verlezza
"Performance Art" or The Art of Performance as Karen Finley paints a vivid picture of 9/11 with words that transcend any image that might be lingering in your memory of that American Tragedy. Go to the Laurie Beechman Theatre, sit down, relax, and prepare yourself for a bumpy emotional ride. Do not veer, stay there with her, in the moment, as she creates and re-creates fear, pain, loss and anger then frames it with a kiss of understanding.
Karen Finley: “Make Love” at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, 407 West 42nd Street at 9th Avenue. Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. (September 10 and 17). Tickets are $22.00 plus a $15.00 food/drink minimum at 212.352.3101.
Permalink | Posted by David Roberts on Sunday, September 4, 2011
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