By NATALIE ZAK

Daily Community Culture Editor

“I think it would be a great 

time for men, basically, to go on 
vacation. There isn’t enough work 
for everybody. Certainly in the 
arts, in all genres, I think that 
men should step away. I think 
men should stop writing books. 
I think men should stop making 
movies or television. Say, for 50 
to 100 years.” - Eileen Myles in 
an interview with the New York 
Times, Jan. 2016

***
Paraphrasing 
Myles’s 

declaration in an interview with 
The Michigan Daily, Theatre and 
Drama Prof. Holly Hughes echoed 
and elaborated on this sentiment, 
one inspired by her career as a gay 
and women’s rights performance 
artist at Women’s One World 
Cafe Theater. Published this 
past November, Hughes’s book 
“Memories of the Revolution: 
The First Ten Years of WOW 
Cafe Theater,” anthologized the 
monologues, performances and 
plays presented by WOW Cafe 
during her time there.

“One of the jokes we used to 

tell was that we were all feminists 
who were kicked out of other 
feminist groups for having the 
wrong haircut,” Hughes said.

A hidden gem of the feminist 

and gay rights movements in 
the ’80s, WOW Cafe, presented 
experimental 
theater 
written 

and performed by members at a 
small theater in the East Village 
of New York City. Consisting 
of a room, twenty seats and no 
backstage, 
the 
participants, 

passionate about their material, 
would dedicate days and nights 
to maintaining the theater and 
practicing performances. Trivial 
tasks like taking out the garbage 
and putting away props didn’t go 
unnoticed, for it was a cooperative 
and needed all the help it could 
get to survive.

From 
performances 
titled 

“Paradykes Lost” to “Fear of 
Laughing on the Lower East 
Side,” no subject was considered 
taboo and with twenty seats, it 
wasn’t hard to sell out a show. This 
“uncooperative cooperative,” as 
they called themselves, although 
edgy and ahead of its time, made 
little impact on the feminist and 
gay scene in New York City while 
it existed. 

“It was so freeing … a lot 

of the performers there were 
in the process of coming out 
even though there were always 
heterosexual women,” Hughes 
said. “You just had to be fine 
hanging around a bunch of dykes. 
You had an audience that was 

dealing with issues that existed 
nowhere else. It doesn’t mean that 
everything we did was loved, but 
not everything we did flopped. 
It’s different to perform in front 
of an audience that wants you to 
get better than with an audience 
that is completely clueless and 
doesn’t care.”

The 
freedom 
and 
liberty 

associated 
with 
incorporating 

unspeakable 
topics 
into 

performances 
is 
one 
of 
the 

principle aspects that attracted 
Hughes to WOW. Leaving behind 
her waitressing job in Kalamazoo 
after college graduation, Hughes 
headed out to New York City, 
an unfamiliar land, to pursue 
an education as a painter at 
the recently created New York 
Feminist Art Institute.

“I had an early onset fear of 

missing out thirty years before 
that term was invented,” she said. 
“Realizing all these exciting social 
changes are happening, art is 
happening, I needed to leave.”

Though this institute didn’t 

last long as an innovative form 
of art education, but it did 
expose Hughes to the stories 
she wished to tell as a woman 
and the experiences that shaped 
her. Coming across a flyer that 
proclaimed “XX Christmas Party 
for Woman,” Hughes found her 
entrance into WOW Cafe, a world 
of provocation and eccentricity 
that would consume her life for 
the next ten years.

From members such as poet 

Eileen Myles to recent Tony 
Award winner Lisa Krone, WOW 
sent off into the world confident 
women set on achieving their 
goals. Despite the mainstream 
success of some of its members, 
little attention is granted in 
general to the importance of 
this early onset experimental 
theater organization. Feminism, 
in a modern sense, is promoted 
by celebrities and comedians, 
people with major influence over 
the public opinion. It is publicized 
and brought to the forefront of the 
media’s attention.

Hughes described WOW Cafe 

as a “zeitgeist that made people 
like Shonda Rhimes and Tina Fey 
possible.” The movement that 
began in a small theater thirty 
five years ago has, without anyone 
noticing, catapulted forward the 
feminist movement.

But 
in 
the 
’80s, 
despite 

their “cheekiness and give-no-
fucks 
attitude” 
the 
material 

WOW 
presented 
was 
rooted 

in vulnerability. Pouring their 
hearts, souls and struggles into 
their performances, the women 
at WOW needed the “colossal 
indifference” garnered from the 

East Village. It allowed them to 
experiment, break taboos and 
move mountains all in the comfort 
of the East Village box that had 
become their home.

Hughes, on the other hand, 

achieved mainstream attention in 
a drastically different way from 
other members. Involved in a case 
against the National Endowment 
for the Arb, NEA vs. Finley, 
Hughes spent three years of her 
life fighting appeal after appeal 
until reaching the Supreme Court. 
The case centered around a NEA 
veto of grants for her, two other 
homosexual artists and a woman 
of color in abidance with a law 
passed in 1985 requiring the NEA 
to consider “general standards of 
decency and respect” along with 
artistic merit in awarding funds.

“The history of art is the history 

of provocation and they [Congress] 
didn’t embrace it,” Hughes said. 
“They either ran away, didn’t do 
anything or aided and abetted it.”

Had the work she presented for 

funding been reviewed or even 
looked at by those vetoing it? No, 
but because she identifies as a 
lesbian, her work was considered 
homoerotic 
and 
immediately 

dismissed, Hughes said. In the 
end, the four were granted their 
funding, but the law withholding 
funding remained along, Hughes 
said, with the label that “Holly 
Hughes is a lesbian and her art 
is highly of that genre.” A label 
that, if anything, represents the 
ignorance and intolerance of the 
’90s.

Resulting 
from 
her 
time 

at WOW Cafe, Hughes has a 
unique perception on the world 
of women struggling with their 
identity. Having witnessed the 
obstacles faced by her peers, 
Hughes wishes to impart the 
same sense of empowerment she 
received at WOW Cafe onto her 
female students and provide a 
similar stimulating environment.

“It’s my privilege and honor to 

be a teacher here and help foster 
their art, but I still see in my 
class so many of my young female 
students don’t have the same 
belief and confidence in their 
work as my white, cisgender male 
students,” she said.

It 
is 
this 
difference 
in 

confidence that Hughes strives to 
change in her students. Though 
she has made valiant efforts, 
it must be realized that the 
fundamental treatment of men 
versus women, especially in the 
art world, is a societal problem. 
Confidence cannot be fixed by 
a single teacher alone, but if, 
say, men spent about 50 years 
separated from the art scene, we 
might stand a chance. 

Artist
PROFILE

IN

SINGLE REVIEW 

 Halfway through his monstrous 
90-bar verse, Kanye spits, “I 
know some fans who thought 
I wouldn’t 
rap like this 
again / But the 
writer’s block 
is over, emcees 
cancel your 
plans.” He isn’t 
kidding.
 “No More 
Parties in 
L.A.,” origi-
nally teased at 
the tail-end of 
his last release 
“Real Friends,” 
is many things. It’s Kanye’s 
exhaustion with plastic L.A. 
life. It’s the reveal of the long 
rumored Kendrick collabora-
tion. It’s a renewed jab at Amber 
Rose (after all these years!). It’s a 
reminder that Kanye really can’t 
stand that goddamn laptop thief 

of a cousin.
 But above all, this is the return 
of a man who wants (needs) to 
prove himself. Yeezus, while 
critically acclaimed for pro-
duction and experimentalism, 
was by no means Kanye’s best 
rapping. His screaming on “I 
Am a God” was arguably more 
powerful than its verses, and 
there were lines throughout 
the album like “In a French-ass 
restaurant / Hurry up with my 
damn croissants.” Humorous, 
yes, but not always in the right 
way. 
 It always takes audacity to 
invite the lyrical king of rap onto 
your track. There’s the risk — 
perhaps the expectation — that 
Kendrick will eclipse whoever’s 
track he graces. Who else was 
even on “Control”? It’s almost 
naïve of Kanye, or any modern 
rapper, to think they could han-
dle or even match him. But Kanye 

takes on the challenge with not 
just a fervor, but absolute fire, 
reminding us that there are still 
other kings who reign. 
 The result is a stunning tag-
team track that manages to run 
over six minutes in just two 
packed verses. It’s strikingly 
old-school — and that goes 
beyond the Madvillany-evoking 
production by Madlib himself. 
The tight and lengthy verses 
recall ’90s and early ’00s hip-
hop classics, where hooks are 
subservient to bars and produc-
tion accompanies rather than 
controls. That killer Kendrick 
line from “Hood Politics” is hov-
ering in the air: “Critics want to 
mention that they miss when hip 
hop was rappin’ / Motherfucker, 
if you did, then Killer Mike’d 
be platinum.” It’s not just Killer 
Mike who’s repping tradition.
 And of course it ends with a 
swish. — Matt Gallatin

A+

Untitled 2

Grimes

Late Night with 

Jimmy Fallon

CLAIRE ABDO/Daily

Holly Hughes was a part of the WOW Cafe Theater in the 1980s.

Lee explores utopia

By COSMO PAPPAS

Daily Arts Writer

“Utopia” is a fancy word that 

means asking and answering 
the question: what do we want 
to 
see, 
what 

do we want to 
happen? Young 
Jean 
Lee, 
a 

former aspiring 
Shakespearean 
scholar 
and, 

according 
to 
Chris 

Isherwood 
of 
The 
New 

York 
Times, 

“the 
most 

adventurous 
downtown 
playwright 
of 

her generation,” 
puts 
forward 

two responses 
in 
her 
plays 

“Untitled 
Feminist Show” 
and 
“Straight 

White Men.” Lee will be giving 
a lecture at 5:10 p.m. at The 
Michigan Theater through the 
Penny Stamps Lecture Series on 
Thursday, Jan. 21.

“ ‘Untitled Feminist Show’ is a 

carousing exploration of a world 
where gender is recognized and 
celebrated in all its fluidity and 
freedom,” Lee wrote in an e-mail 
interview with The Michigan 
Daily. Featuring six fully nude 
dancers whose only props are pink 
parasols, this hour-long, wordless 
show creates a space where the 
idea of gender becomes freedom 
and not a constraint, stigma, 
marginalization 
or 
violence 

toward gender nonconforming 
people. Lee explained how the 
play is a space of freedom — for 
example, one of the performers 
does not identity either as male or 
female.

“ ‘UFS’ was about creating 

a utopia, and in our utopia, 
that freedom of identification 
was possible ... For me, fluidity 
of 
identity 
(which 
‘Untitled 

Feminist Show’ celebrates) is an 

acknowledgment that we can’t 
shove people into categories of 
identity,” Lee wrote. “The show 
isn’t about being a women vs. 
being a man. It’s about showing 
people who were born with 
female-coded bodies who are able 
to transcend these types of gender 
distinctions.”

The term utopia can also pose 

the question: what is off about 
what we want to see? For Lee, 
“Straight White Men” was a 
kind of experiment in character 
identification 
and 
in 
asking 

the 
question, 
what 
should 

straight white men do with 
their privilege? As she recounts 
in an interview with American 
Theater; its beginnings stemmed 
from a workshop.

“When I was at Brown doing 

the first workshop, there was a 
room full of students, people of 
color, and queer people, a very 
diverse room. And then they 
started talking very harshly about 
straight white men. I said, ‘Okay. 
Now I know all the things you 
don’t like about straight white 
men. Why don’t you give me a 
list of all the things you wished 
straight white men would do that 
would make you hate them less?’”

She continued, “So they told 

me all these things, and I wrote 
down the whole list, and then I 
wrote that character. And they all 
hated him. They hated him.”

Lee, described her writing 

process in an interview with 
BOMB Magazine as “failing over 
and over and over and over and 
over and over again,” thrives 
when she is putting her audiences 
(and herself) between rocks and 
hard places. As she says in the 
same interview, “The maxim 
is basically I try to think of the 
worst idea for a show I could 
possibly think of.”

It’s easy to see how a show like 

“Straight White Men” fits the 
bill, which features four straight 
white men (three sons and a 
father) whose gathering around 
Christmas is the launchboard 
for 
exploring 
straight 
white 

masculinity. (For the straight 

white male readers, have you ever 
thought about how you won’t 
go to get a sweater even when 
it’s too cold for the t-shirt you’re 
wearing? That’s one question that 
one scene examines, as Lee and 
the cast describe in this video 
interview.) Their identity comes 
under scrutiny as Lee loosens 
straight white male identity as 
the “default position,” she said 
in a video interview with Public 
Theater NY.

“I asked myself, ‘If I woke up 

tomorrow and I was a straight 
white man, what would I do?’ 
” Lee wrote. “That’s where the 
existential crisis came up for me, 
because it would be one thing 
if I woke up as a straight, white 
man who never thought about his 
identity and enjoyed his privilege 
unthinkingly — that might feel 
kind of good. But if I were to 
wake up with my own mind in a 
straight, white body, it would be 
completely problematic.”

Lee’s 
theatrical 
diptych 

approaches 
questions 
about 

identity from two directions. 
What if you were stuck in this 
identity that isn’t yours, whose 
privilege comes at the expense 
of violence toward everyone 
else? What if you had absolute 
freedom in your identity? Lee, 
who regularly voices her dislike 
of preachy, didactically political 
theater, has put forward two 
works 
that, 
though 
written 

separately, are an innovative 
venue 
for 
engaging 
with 

questions of identity. These are 
questions that are essential and 
uncomfortable for Lee, who 
describes growing up Korean-
American in a predominantly 
white community where she 
was forced to deny her ethnic 
heritage.

“I think that they are both 

looking toward the future — 
‘SWM’ looks toward a future that 
might be imminent, and ‘UFS’ 
a future that may never come,” 
Lee wrote. “They both point to a 
world where we define people in 
different ways than we have in the 
past.”

UFS

Thurs. Jan. 21, 
7:30p.m; Fri. 
Jan. 22, 8 p.m.

Power Center

$12/$20/$20/$48 

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

TRAILER REVIEW

 I thought that, in 2016, it 
was impossible to use Queen’s 
“Bohemian Rhapsody” in any 
kind of new 
or interest-
ing way, but 
whoever cut 
together the 
new trailer 
for “Suicide 
Squad” was 
somehow able 
to breathe new 
life into a great 
but incredibly 
tired song.
 I have no idea if I’m actually 
going to see “Suicide Squad” — 
comic book movie fatigue, ya 
know? — but even as just a two-
and-a-half minute work, this 
trailer is pretty great, and it 
does a brilliant job of manipu-
lating the Queen song — a full 
cinematic work in itself — so 
that it doesn’t actually steal the 

spotlight away from its stars.
 The trailer begins with shots 
of its main characters along 
with lyrics that underscore 
their unbalanced mental states. 
We see a lot of Will Smith and 
Margot Robbie throughout, but 
while Smith plays what seems 
like a pretty standard tough 
dude unfamiliar to comics 
fans, Robbie nails the fucked-
up whimsy of Harley Quinn. 
Her grin as she’s joking (or 
being completely serious) about 
the voices her in head is price-
less. Meanwhile, there’s also a 
crocodile, a girl possessed by 
a witch and a bunch of white 
dudes who look vaguely famil-
iar from other movies. Oh, and 
Jared Leto is trying way too 
hard as the Joker.
 From then on, it’s a lot of 
punches, gunshots and explo-
sions set to rocking guitar 
without any real context to the 

story. We have no idea what’s 
going on, but “Bohemian Rhap-
sody” makes it OK, because it’s 
great to see the song in a fresh 
context (I’m sure whoever 
made this trailer loved “Guard-
ians of the Galaxy”). That said, 
even the voiceover set-up is a 
little too bluntly honest about 
what we really want from 
this movie, simply stating 
that the characters are going 
“somewhere really bad” to do 
“something” that will get them 
killed. Hey, at least it’s got a lot 
of fire and attitude.
 Though the reality is that 
“Suicide Squad” probably won’t 
be different from any other 
comic book movie that comes 
out this year, the trailer still 
manages to feel exciting and 
cool. And who knows, maybe 
Robbie’s Harley Quinn alone will 
be worth the price of admission. 
— Adam Theisen

A

No More 
Parties 
in L.A.

Kanye West 
feat. Kend-
rick Lamar

Self-released

B+

Suicide 
Squad

Warner Bros.

Aug. 5, 2016

SWM

Fri. Jan. 22, 
8 p.m; Sat. 
Jan. 23, 2 
p.m. & 8 p.m.

Lydia Mendels-

sohn Theater

$12/$20/$20/$48 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
the b-side
Thursday, January 21, 2016 — 3B

