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