Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back by Guillermo Gómez-Peña (review)

180 REVIEWS wi!h the reverberation of our actual engagement, sorrow and freedom" (100). According to Bogart, "The result was powerful and reminded us in a living way of our own history. Through the embodiment of severe stereotypes, a small exorcism was performed" (100). Bogart's perspective on the performance as a white director may differ from that of African-American audience members, but she does not include a detailed discussion of audience response. While her efforts to trouble racist stereotypes in performance are commendable, !his chapter would have benefitted from. broader discussion of the political and cultural implications of her artistic choices. In the last two chapters Bogart addresses the issues of embarrassment and resistance. "If your work does not sufficiently embarrass you," she asserts, "then very likely no one will be touched by it" (113). The benefits of experimentation are such that she pays particular attention to the necessity of being able to take risks without fearing the embarrassment of failure during the creative process. In her opinion resistance to experimentation is natural in both life and art and creates a dynamic tension that infuses creativity. For Bogart, "The question becomes: how can you use the difficulties and obstacles to help rather than discourage expression?" (140). In A Director Prepares Bogart offers directors bo!h inspiration and practical solutions to common problems.The brevity of the book at times necessitates an oversimplification of complex concepts, as in the discussion of American Vaudeville. Still, Bogart has undeniably distinguished herself as a superior director, and with this publication, she is successful in providing a practical text that encourages self-discipline, experimentation, and artistic growth among theatre practitioners. GUILLERMO G6MEZ-PENA. Dangerous Border Crossers: The Artist Talks Back. London: Routledge, 2000. Pp. xvii + 285, illustrated. $24.95 (Pb). Reviewed by Frederick Luis Aldama. University ofColorado at Boulder In his latest book, Dangerous Border Crossers, performance artist Guillermo G6mez-Pena brings to life his Chicano stage persona as a self-identified "migrant provocateur" (9), wi!h a collection of writings dating from 1994 to 1999. including 'performance scripts. interviews. his so-called "web-back" Internet conversations (9, 46), and travelogues. As a whole, the book gives rich texture to !he variety of politically charged performances !hat Gomez-Pena has used to shake audiences out of the rigid thinking that patrols borders and separates straight from queer, brown from white, men from women. For G6mez-Pefia and fellow performers in the collective Pocha Nostr•• including Roberto Sifuentes. the performance act aims to foreground how Reviews 181 everyday social, cultural, and political issues restrict experience and possibilities for identification, especially for ChicanoslMexic.nas in the US. For example, after California passed its anti-immigration laws, G6mez-Pefia and Sifuentes chose nollo perform in liberal "hip art spaces" (10) but rather to hang themselves from giant crosses on Rodeo Beach for three hours, a crucifixion that enacted a symbolic protest in the heart of right-wing America. G6mez-Pefia and Sifuentes do not limit their performances to fractured Chicano/a geopolitical terrain, however. As G6mez-Pefia explains, they lour their performances to "the end of Western civilization and the outposts of Chicanismo" (II), so that Georgia, Florida, Indiana, Montana, and even Helsinki, Finland have been sites for their performances. On one occasion in a Helsinki tequila bar, G6mez-Pefia and Sifuentes were shamelessly treated as hypersexualized objects, coerced into salsa-dancing, and asked to perform erotic acts alongside a lesbian cabaret. Such experiences of "ideological vertigo" (120) have only added fuel to their mission to change the racist and sexist thinking that oppresses racially othered peoples globally. To revolutionize racist thinking, Gomez-Pena believes, his performances must lap deeply into his audiences' desires and fantasies. Rather than indict racist and sexist behavior directly, therefore, his strategy is to have audience members confront the "forbidden/forgotten zones of the psyche" (40). To this end, he shocks his audiences - brown and white - out of patterns of racist and sexist behavior by culling confessions and fantasies from the Internet and recycling them at a Pocha Nostra Website. He and Sifuentes then tum these fantasies into performance characters who force audiences to acknowledge their "intercultural fears and desires" (35...