ARTS
The Michigan Daily Monday, November 2, 1992 Page 5
Sex,
lies and
Basement
Arts
by Lia Kushnir
"Lips Together, Teeth Apart," a
Basement Arts production, played to
a full house this past Halloween
night. It wasn't like all the other
shows; this was smaller, intense,
free, and that wasn't even the best
thing about it. The Terrence Mc-
Nally ("Frankie and Johnny in the
Clair de Lune") play was performed
Lips Together,
Teeth Apart
Arena Theatre
October 31, 1992
with refreshing sensitivity and sim-
plicity. Clinton Bond directed, bring-
ing new depth to the arts of spouse-
switching and campus theater.
The audience sat facing an island
beach house porch, complete with
simulated wave sounds and sand at
our feet. We met two couples, and
everybody on stage was hiding
something. If clothes had the power
to build character, the cast would
Whave been all set. Chloe Haddock
(Tammy Jacobs), the housewife-ac-
tress in trendy, 10-changes-per-hour
outfits, dominated the porch. She
was catering, loud, and imposing, in
contrast to her deeply agitated and
sarcastic brother Sam (Danny
Gurwin). This Funny Girl meets
Woody Allen scenario dissipates
once the plot unveils the "secret"
Chloe and Sam share, along with
their respective spouses. Sam's wife,
Sally (Christy Wright), wrapped in
her free-flowing artsy skirt and
watery-eyed stares, tried to hold a
See LIPS, Page 8
Moore wisdom with a laugh and a simile
by Will Matthews
Loeric Moo simply put, a talented author. She
writes with a smooth fluidity and a wry, often subtle,
sense of humor. In her short story "Two Boys," she
writes, "This was why she liked Boy Number Two:
He was kind and quiet, like someone she'd known for
a long time, like someone she'd sat next to at school.
He looked down and told her he loved her, sweated
all over her, and left his smell lingering around her
room." Most of us have known a drippy guy like this,
and Moore helps us to remember him.
The author of two books of short stories ("Like
Life" and "Self-Help") and one novel ("Anagrams"),
Moore took literature courses and creative writing
courses as an undergraduate in college. Though she
won a national creative writing contest, she didn't
believe that creative writing could ever be a career.
"I imagined ... that it was just something I did
while I was in college," she explained in a recent in-
terview, "but once I got out ... I really began to miss
it. So I applied to graduate school and went to Cornell
and kept trying there. The thing that I always did was
that I just worked very hard - I didn't have a lot of
faith, but I had a lot of energy, so you can always
compensate for the absence of one thing with the
presence of something else."
The images and diction in her writing are often
startling in their conception and effect. "Her gaze
dropped to her hands, which had started to move
around nervously, independently, like small rodents
kept as pets," she writes in her short story "The Jew-
ish Hunter." Her similes and metaphors, like the ro-
dents, jump off the printed page with the vividness
and agility of a frightened antelope.
Many of Moore's stories deal with women
searching for an identity or a sense of self in a world
that doesn't want them to find one. In "Two Boys," a
young woman who is having an affair with two men
feels confused and lost, unable to see clearly her own
self amidst their strong, well-defined characters and
personalities. By the end of the story, however, her
character emerges stoic, solid, witty, observant, and
wiser for her experiences.
Like a pianist faced with a page of empty mea-
sures or a second-grader faced with a frosty window
and a warm thumb, a writer is a craftsman who pla-
cates and fulfills an urge to create. "It feels like play-
time that you get paid for. I think it's a craft's im-
pulse. It's like I have an impulse to make things, and
I'm not that good of a cook. If I were a good cook I
probably wouldn't write. But I have this impulse to
make things from various ingredients lying about in
my imagination and in the world, and that for me has
taken the form of writing."
Fortunately, Lorrie Moore stays away from spatu-
las and skillets, and instead writes stories that articu-
late universal emotions, images, and ideas that come
as a result of being human.
LORRIE MOORE will read from her work today at 4
p.m. in the Rackham Amphitheater. Admission is
free.
Under Lorrie Moore's calm surface is a wry, often subtle, sense of humor.
An e'en of hallow skits and symphony
Limey heaven
Do you want to see a free
movie Thursday night? Just stop
by the Daily Arts office between
now and this Thursday and we'll
give you a pass (if there are any
left) to see "Waterland," the new
Jeremy Irons movie which we
heard sucks, but hell, it's free. It's
based on a book by some brilliant
limey (Graham Swift).
Mitchell at Museum
Joan Mitchell, one of the most
important modern artists, died
Friday. Mitchell, who was known
for her energetic renditions of
sunflowers, combined the seem-
ingly disparate influences of
Impressionism and Abstract
Expressionism to create her
spellbinding visions. You can see
one of Mitchell's paintings in the
RJMMA. It's with the Picassos,
and the juxtaposition is well-
deserved.
Rainer on me
Have you seen any of those cool
movies by that canny Kraut, Rainer
Werner Fassbinder? The Michigan
Theater is showing his "The
Stationmaster's Wife" (1978)
tonight at 7 p.m. Call 668-8397.
by Michael John Wilson
and Alan J. Hogg, Jr.
The famous, sold-out-long-be-
fore-you-heard-of-it Halloween Con-
cert was not the place for purists last
Friday. Fans tiled in, both with and
without costumes, and the arrival of
a costumed, waving "Queen," com-
plete with princely consort and
dumpy dress, stirred things up - but
not nearly as much as the balloons-
as-grapes folk whose costumes,
sadly, popped when they sat down.
(They were, if you're wondering,
seedless.)
The concert (which, after all, was
why we were there) finally began
with a huge, anatomically correct
COCR REIE
Halloween Concert
Hill Aiuditoriutn
October 30, 1992
spider descending from the ceiling
of Hill Auditorium. Then the weird
stuff started to happen.
The orchestra filed onstage
through a series of skits, most of
which were lame take-offs of
"Saturday Night Live." (Is our cul-
ture so comedically impoverished
that we have to rehash "Wayne's
World" and "Sprockets," over and
over? We have to admit, however,
that the possibility that "gender-neu-
tral" Pat is related to Barbara Bush
was, to say the least, mildly in-
spired.) Standouts were the Ameri-
can Gladiators-clad double basses
and the Angel of Death on the harp.
But there was music, too. When
See HALLOWEEN, Page 8
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Judge
for Yourself
When armed robbers, rapists and murderers
are on trial, will you trust an inexperienced
judge to rule on their cases?
During every trial, a judge must rule on dozens of legal
issues, objections, and tactics used by lawyers to promote their
clients' cases. It requires a great deal of trial experience if justice is
going to be served. One candidate for Circuit Court Judge, Jerry
Farmer, has more than two decades of experience in every court-
room in the county. As Chief Assistant Prosecutor, he's been safe-
guarding the rights of Washtenaw County citizens for 19 years.
His opponent, Kurtis Wilder, has seen few trials and no
criminal trials in his seven years as corporate lawyer, before he was
appointed judge six months ago by his friend, Governor John Engler.
Since 75% of trials in the circuit court are criminal cases, are you
willing to let Kurtis Wilder "learn the ropes" while armed robbers,
rapists and murderers appear before him?
Vote for Jerone Farmer on November 3rd.