Artists Reach Out: Adrienne Truscott

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Adrienne Truscott

Adrienne Truscott
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Adrienne Truscott’s work straddles many genres as a means of creative and financial curiosity and survival--choreographer/comedian/performer/writer and half of The Wau Wau Sisters, a 15-year-long boundary-busting cabaret collaboration. Her work over the years--as both performer and maker--crosses lines and methodologies between dance, theater and performance art, and these iterations appear as both seven-minute acts on the drag and club circuit to evening-length pieces. Her critically acclaimed Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It continues to tour, is being made into a documentary special and is considered a critical impetus to the evolving discourse about rape culture and gender.

She’s a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award Artist (Dance) and a 2017 and 2020 FCA grant recipient for Theater and Performance. She’s been presented by or performed at such iconic venues/series as Sydney Opera House, The Moth, The Roundhouse, CBGB’s, PS122, The Kitchen, Danspace, Judson Memorial Church, MoMa among others. Director’s credits include David’s Friend, Lords of Strut, The Cockpainter, Glace Chase Is Talented, and currently AmericanMotherFuck. She’s an occasional writer for The Guardian, and her essays have been published in two Australian anthologies.

Shows currently on tour are THIS (2018 Bessie Nominee for Outstanding Production, Wild Bore (Green Room Award (AU)) and Adrienne Truscott’s A One-Trick Pony. She was about to finish development and rehearsal on Grey Arias with Le Gateau Chocolat (UK/AU) for Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne) before so many things were cancelled, and is currently rehearsing remotely with Brokentalkers (IR) and developing a new solo piece about genius and gender. Past collaborators include Deborah Hay, David Neumann, Split Britches, Sarah Michelson, John Cameron Mitchell, Kiki and Herb, La Soiree/La Clique. She has taught at Wesleyan, Barnard, Bard, Princeton and NYU.

She wears many hats and is attracted to the thrilling possibility of failure as a mandate for rigor.

Adrienne Truscott
(courtesy of Project Arts Centre, Dublin)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I was in Melbourne working on a project with my friend Le Gateau Chocolat. We were mining our ten-plus years of friendship, correspondence and repartee that mashed up politics, allyship, the darkest of humor and trauma in a strangely easy and immediate way-- always covered with a coat of trashy drag and, often, all that ground would be covered in the same text, FaceTime moment, IG msg, etc. Although we’ve spent umpteen nights, days, two-show days, etc., making each other shriek backstage, attended countless festivals at the same time with different work, endured weird audiences and weirder reviews, this was our first time collaborating.

Grey Arias is a two-hander we had been waiting two years (ten?) to begin. We were on a tight schedule to complete and open this new work in three weeks and then run for three more; we both had reason to anticipate two years of touring work as a result. It’s a piece about race, gender and trauma through the lens of our shared and idiosyncratic performance modes, hurled against and exploiting the (awful) offerings of the problematic scaffolding of Madame Butterfly.

We had demanded that things around the show’s content be reflected institutionally and in our creative team, and we were working and collaborating in a mode that was deeper, funnier and more dangerous than anything else I’ve done, I think. It felt radical. It was thrilling.

We arrived on March 2, and were postponed and on flights by March 18, a day or two after our first off-book showing. We were already working in the modes and strategies performing artists contrive and develop in order to survive: en route to Melbourne, I had performed another piece in a group evening at On The Boards (Seattle) and then flown to Wellington, NZ to join a Philadelphia-based, queer cabaret cohort, doing yet a different piece of work, and Gateau was arriving, colliding with me, from similar circumstances. We wanted a dramaturg but didn’t have the budget for one from the institution. So, my dear friend John came to Melbourne and they worked with us for a week in exchange for housing and introductions.

I was supposed to finish that and leave for Ireland for 2 different projects via another different gig in London and Croatia. All gone for now. Making all of that happen was just another iteration of the ongoing tetris game of survival--turning one gig into two, letting one paid-for plane fare allow for another gig, maybe this gig could invisibly underwrite this other one nearby; use accommodation money to rent a friend’s place and pocket the rest for your cellphone bill. It’s a grift, isn’t it?

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I returned to performing the year I dropped out of college. At the time I thought I was just confused, bored, finding my way. I now know that dropping out was a common response to a (too common) traumatic event. I was wandering around a bit but found myself in the company of two important, life-changing groups: a hippie circus in the mold of Bread & Puppet and Wesleyan dance majors, and both of them changed my life.

In part, I realized that I had massive defensive, protective structures built up around me and something about performing--my attraction to it and my terror of it--made me know that, if I went deep into what it means, I would be able to actually be present in my own life. I don’t know another way I would have found that.

Most of my teachers--whether in improvisational movement, compositional improvisation--taught me to practice being present and lured me away from the kinds of "protections" that had, up until that point, made life seem strange and alien. Deborah Hay’s work involved grounding and practicing presence in different but profound ways that still reside in my body and practice regardless of what I’m practicing.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I lost a year’s actual work in a week, and the loss of that work was followed by the loss of anticipated work. Amidst all the confusion, my first move was to just rest. I hadn’t had nothing to do, for that long, in 20 years--for which I’m both grateful and exhausted! Then I got sick with COVID-19. So, I just concentrated on getting better and not infecting anyone else.

It’s clear to me that I probably won’t be on any kind of stage for at least a year, and that’s how I make my living--in theater spaces filled with people. I have other projects and collaborations that are text-based in some way. So, those are continuing (via Zoom with Ireland, but...).

In the meantime, I am envisioning how to build/create a place for artists on the property I share with my partner of eighteen years (who is also an artist) that imagines a way to offer space and refuge that is accessible, somehow, outside the traditional models of residency applications and in-kind support. I know this is possible, because I feel like I’ve been operating in a way that engages, straddles and avoids traditional models all at once. So that’s what I’m doing until further notice--yardwork and building.

I feel that my movement practice has become task-based and weather related--like some kind of artist-farmer consulting the weather as if it were an Independent Contractors’s Almanac for when to work outside (tear down, build up) and when to work inside (write, meet, consult).

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I have been wanting to create these little out-cropped cabins for years, but I’m always too busy and on the road. I care about making space for other artists and participating in community/chosen family. I care about artist-to-artist strategies that evolve and re-imagine how we exchange support, share a precarious economic landscape, provide for each other and which deploys many of the same strategies I use as an independent artist to something that supports a community.

I don’t know how "legit" it will be because a lot of "legit" places in the world (banks, local permit offices, etc.) don’t view my twenty years of art-making and bill-paying as proof that I can function responsibly or even exist! It’s kind of hilarious. I just don’t look like a real person or thing "on paper" unless it’s in an arts-industry context. So, I’m going the outlaw route to get it done my own way--weather permitting!

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

For now, my practice feels like some iteration that is adjacent to what it used to be--and will be for the foreseeable future--meaning, I am writing and conceiving and collaborating; I am learning to video edit, because I want to and I have the "time," and I want to be in control of if and how my live work translates to digital, if it comes to that (I’m resistant and protective of our live art for now); I’m mentoring some other artists. And, today I’m gonna work outside, building a second DIY structure for someone, an artist, who needs space, refuge, etc. "until the rains come" at 8pm tonight!

As a maker, I’ve always worked in a mode that first asks if an obstacle presented can be a gift or a solution that may be more satisfying than the direct route. For now, that means physical labor and imagining this little artists’ compound. My friend who is a trans production coordinator and lighting designer who is between housing for the month of June is arriving on June 2 to help us build in exchange for housing and (socially distanced) community. So, it’s already starting!

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

My self-care involves not hustling gigs online in a panic, meditating, curating my digital interactions carefully and mowing the lawn which is always a very rich creative space for me.

******

DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

******

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"THIS" is what again? Adrienne Truscott at American Realness

Adrienne Truscott in THIS
(photo: Paul Goode)

Adrienne Truscott brought her adaptable THIS show to American Realness 2018 at Abrons Arts Center's Playhouse, and I caught that final performance on the night also marking AR's finale. The APAP conference, too, drew to its close Tuesday morning, although there are APAP-targeted festivities (PSNY's COIL shows; Under The Radar's added week for the great Split Britches duo) still going strong this week.

So, what exactly is THIS? And who exactly is Truscott?

The answer to both seems to be: A LOT. Also, probably, IT DEPENDS.

The woman has worked through numerous genres--from dance to writing to circus to cabaret and stand-up comedy--and THIS draws liberally from her history. Which is what makes it such a fun, elusive and magical this.

At Abrons, it started on a raw stage--look at that rough wall, that corrugated gate, the metal ladder in the corner, the stained paint cloth and other unidentifiable stuff littering the floor--with a rambunctious comic who might or might not be Truscott opening for Truscott, who is who we thought we had come to see and believe we're seeing but now might or might not be seeing because she says she's opening for Truscott who has worked really hard on what we're about to see. Anywho....

After issuing a warning about a blackout we're supposed to imagine that doesn't happen when she says it does but then happens when we think it won't, the unidentified opener is dropping sex-related jokes to varying degrees of success. ("Comedy and abortion have something in common.... Timing is everything.") Timing is important, too, to a stage
magician's sleight of hand, which is what THIS turns out to be. Anything can appear and disappear when we least expect it--elements of decor; running narratives that abruptly stop and run away and...wait...run back, then vanish again so you don't know where they were supposed to be taking you; a mechanical bird that flies prettily until...oh, no...it doesn't; and a performer who sometimes hides behind scenery even as she continues to talk to us.

What to make of it? It's such a...such a...thing, this THIS, and the audience I sat among--mainly young, I noticed--loved it hard and answered it with a big roar.

If you did not see this THIS but you happen get another chance to see THIS, I suspect you will see a somewhat different THIS. But, no worries. You will see Truscott--trust--and she is always worth it, no matter who shows up onstage.

Writing and performance: Adrienne Truscott
Direction: Ellie Heyman
Sound/video/set design: Carmine Covelli
Light Design: Mary Ellen Stebbins

Closed. For general information on American Realness 2018, click here.

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"What Will Be Different?": Who do I stand with?

It has been a month since the US presidential election and--as we watch the president-elect steadily arm himself for assault on every aspect of our society's progress, any hope that our democracy might be a true guiding light in the world--many of us continue to struggle to process, on mental, emotional, even visceral levels, just what has happened.

Last Monday, New York Live Arts opened its doors for a gathering, Open Spectrum: What Will Be Different?, conceived by marketing consultant Brian Tate and curated by Tate and NYLA's Associate Artistic Director Janet Wong in alliance with MAPP International.

The forum examined issues of concern to women, a demographic with complex effects upon the course of this election. Program notes set forth the following questions:

The election is over. Now the future awaits, and the lives of women--of us all--will be transformed. What shifts of policy and culture can we expect for women under President Donald J. Trump? How should we respond as citizens to advance the cause of justice and equal opportunity for women from today forward? To meet that challenge, how will we ourselves change?

[I take full responsibility for that strikeout, by the way.]

Tate noted three other questions to guide each of as we each find our best response to the challenge of this time:

What do I stand for?
Who do I stand with?
What am I ready to do?

It was the second question that interested me most as I looked around the studio and noted the striking predominance of white women of professional/upscale appearance. And although there were some dance artists in attendance, this apparently was not an event with much draw for the dance community. Although the excellent panel featured notable performing artists (Adrienne Truscott, Susana Cook), cultural scholars and critics (Catharine R. Stimpson, Margo Jefferson) and Brooklyn Museum chair and arts activist Elizabeth A. Sackler along with human rights activist Rana Abdelhamid in a venue historically grounded in the art of dance, it was fascinating that the crucial role of the arts and of artists scarcely came up for consideration.

Cook's experience of growing up under military dictatorship in Argentina offered insight into how the unacceptable gradually transforms itself into the norm. It would have been good to hear more about how Argentinian artists, forced to work under the radar, managed to carry on their struggle. Jefferson--one of the panel's most searching speakers--cited King Lear:

The weight of this sad time we must obey. Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.

And yet what hung over the room was a sense of shock, grief and apprehension still so raw that perhaps everyone, artists included, are still figuring out how to balance that weight and how to shape feelings into effective action.

The question was raised: Who are our models for responsible civic engagement? From the perspective of the arts and artists, the answers called out were revealing: Cecile Richards, president, Planned Parenthood Federation of America; activist and scholar Angela Davis; German Chancellor Angela Merkel; filmmaker Ava DuVernay, my first choice; and Sylvia Rivera, the late trans-activist veteran of Stonewall, whose name was not familiar to most of the audience. I kept thinking, a downtown arts audience would know Rivera's name right away.

Who do we stand with?

Future Open Spectrum gatherings will address the post-election concerns of other demographic groups, including people with disabilities, Black youth and immigrants. For information, contact New York Live Arts here.

See the video of Open Spectrum: What Will Be Different? here.

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Eiko Otake to take special honor at the 2016 Bessies

This brings back memories!
A moment from Eiko Otake's East Village sojourn,
A Body in Places, presented by Danspace Project
(photo: Ian Douglas)

Today, the NY Dance and Performance Awards organization (the Bessies) announced that a Special Citation will be awarded to dancer-choreographer Eiko Otake "for her expansive and transformative A Body in Places," a platform presented in March by Danspace Project. Meredith Monk will present Otake's citation at the 32nd annual Bessie's ceremony, hosted by award-winning choreographer, writer, and comedian Adrienne Truscott.

Adrienne Truscott
will host the 2016 Bessies
at BAM.
(photo: Richard Hardcastle)

The 2016 Bessies

Tuesday, October 18, 7:30pm

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House

Doors open at 6:30pm 

for red carpet and pre-show celebrations.

The 2016 Bessies presenter line up includes Tei Blow, Katy Clark, Ayodele Casel, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Judy Hussie-Taylor, Judith Jamison, Alastair Macaulay, Joan Myers Brown, Amar Ramasar, Regg Roc and Carlota Santana.

Other special presentation recipients include Brenda Bufalino, recipient of the 2016 Bessie for Lifetime Achievement in Dance, and to The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Alex Smith, Executive Chairman of the Thelma Hill Performing Arts Center, both recipients of awards for Outstanding Service to the Field of Dance.

The ceremony will feature a performance by Joya Powell, recipient of the 2016 Outstanding Emerging Choreographer Award, Donald McKayle’s Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder (2016 Bessie for Outstanding Revival), performed by Dayton Contemporary Dance Company and produced by Paul Taylor’s American Modern Dance, and an all-star tap tribute to Brenda Bufalino.

Post-ceremony party 

(open to all Bessie Awards ticket holders)

BRIC

647 Fulton Street, Brooklyn

Produced in partnership with Dance/NYC, the Bessies recognize exceptional and groundbreaking work in choreography, performance, music composition, and visual design. For a complete list of 2015−16 Bessie nominees, go to: www.bessies.org.

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Adrienne Truscott: a fool in the king's court

Dance/performance artist Adrienne Truscott writes that when, in the early stages of exploring stand-up comedy, she booked her fledgling act on a lesbian cruise, she ran into a little trouble. A feminist telling jokes about rape to a staunchly feminist audience? What could possibly go wrong?

"It was an incredibly 'safe' space as a woman and an unpredictably conservative space for a comedian," she writes in her "Creator's Note" for Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else.

No comic or anyone else for that matter wants to be told what they can or can't say, nor should they be. It is often a comic's job to utter the unutterable; that doesn't mean that they (we?) are beyond rebuke. Comedy is bold, powerful and supple but not unassailable. There is a difference between a fool and the fool in the king's court....

Now through October 3, you can watch this court fool perform a show that gives new meaning to the word chatterbox, a show where Truscott manages to be, at once, giddy and spot-on.

Hosted by Brooklyn eatery and comedy club The Creek and The Cave, co-presenting with The Chocolate Factory and Performance Space 122, Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It gives Truscott a platform to land important points about rape culture, victim shaming and right-wing hypocrisy while dissolving her audience in laughter. And there's even more educational value! Science nerds will enjoy detailed lessons in duck anatomy and gerbil crisis management. It all works, and while I'm still baffled by the gears in this machine, I'll note that if I told you a single joke out of context, that funniness might fall apart. The wholeness of Truscott's performance is the thing that works.

Truscott's exuberant persona is wildly nonstop, relentless, irresistible and, famously, naked in the netherparts region. Yikes! No wonder she likens this stand-up act to an act of rape!

The most real danger you'll face from Truscott, though, is the likelihood of getting smacked by a denim jacket ripped off and hurled from the stage--my face stung from a slight graze--in one of her acts of divestment. Let's just say, if Trickster Truscott were Salome dancing for Herod, she'd be working 70 veils, not seven.

What she's stripping at, though, is our tendency to avert our eyes and stay silent about things that upset the state of order. (It took a long time for some people to snap out of the Cosby Show trance, didn't it?) But there's absolutely no escaping when pussy's got something to say, damn it, and she will not be denied!

Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It runs tonight at 8pm and this Saturday at 7pm. It continues Wednesday-Saturday, September 30-October 3 at 8pm. For information, visit The Creek and The Cave's Web site here.  To purchase tickets, click here.

The Creek and The Cave
10-93 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens
(map/directions: scroll to bottom of page)

Coming soon from Movement Research: Le Song, Ya?!

Like Christmas, signs of the annual Movement Research Festival--this year, entitled Le Song, Ya?!--are already in the wind. To see what curators Adrienne Truscott and Jibz Cameron (of Dynasty Handbag fame) have in store for the much-anticipated, reportedly lasagna-like festival week, click here.

Tuesday, December 3, should prove to be a particularly amazing day. It includes:

EXORCISE CLASS--facilitated by the aforementioned curators--"A hyper-aerobic, sweaty, instructional,conceptual dance party designed to work out you psychic fat blockage and tone up supersensory abz. While living your spandex dreams and looking real." (11am-1pm at Danspace Project; $10)

WE CAME TO THIS CITY TO SHIT ON A STAGE--"How do we make, define, notice 'transgressive' art in a city whose identity, economy and landscape are increasingly manicured, welcoming, mainstream, highly visible and inaccessible?" (6pm at Gibney Dance Center; FREE)

Also recommended:

PERFORMING VULNERABILITY--"What does it mean to be vulnerable in performance? Is vulnerability a state or can it be 'done?'" Panel moderated by Adrienne Truscott. Panelists include: niv Acosta, Ben Asriel, Hilary Clark, Miguel Gutierrez and Juliana May (6pm at Jimmy's No. 43, 43 East 7th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, East Village, back room; FREE) 

Movement Research

Maybe we could all use a new beginning

countercritic lays out a detailed, very interesting exploration of Adrienne Truscott's genesis, no! in A New Beginning.

While I cannot say I share this level of fascination with the work, I think the notion of checking in with how one is reacting to a work of art is spot on--a non-intimidating, engaged way for anyone to approach any art. This is how I work and what I've recommended to students. And we do need new forms and methods of critical writing about dance that will afford room for ambiguity, uncertainty and metamorphosis.

Fun with Adrienne Truscott

Here's a fun interview with dancer-choreographer Adrienne Truscott by Celeste Sunderland of The Gothamist. Truscott's new work, Genesis, no!, continues through Saturday evening at Dance Theater Workshop.