On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century

Beauties and Beasts

• • • Beauties and Beasts S ome families get raised, and some get lowered. A deviant Dad stood in the air shaft outside Franklin Furnace's basement, leering through the window, snapping a handcuff around the wasp waist of his daughter, a Barbie doll. "You've just been waiting for your daddy, haven't you?" he smirked. He ogled. He oozed, because he was a slimeball. Salley May's Sinferno cut the real horror in this scenario with simulated horror. The daughter's molested by Dad, unnurtured and unprotected by Mom. But the cheesy gothic ambience of the piece came straight from some plastic-bat-out-of-hell B movie. Cheap special effects seem appropriate to subliminal crud; they're two kinds of raw. May sometimes played the father (in a mask). She played the daughter (as herself), or else Barbie did. There was also a surrogate Dada life-sized dummy in a wheelchair wearing aT-shirt emblazoned SUCK ME. EAT ME RAW. In his diapers and boots, with a Budweiser strapped to his chair, an anchor tattooed on his arm, the guy was a mess and a menace. Mom, that hollow figure, was a torso with prosthetic breasts. Late in the piece, May found Mom's head-the top end of a mannequin with raised brows and open mouth. "You look pretty surprised, Mom," said May. "Is that because you're finally getting the picture?" The daughter's tone, though, was usually more ingenuous than angry . How come we only have sausage to eat? How come we never have milk? She would watch with incredulity as every treat became a trick, as the same people who put red roller skates on her feet also put bands around her arms stuck full of radiating needles. Maybe she could get something out of life's unpleasant surprises. Maybe she could use the rusty tools she finds under her pillow-to hack her arm off. That might get Mom's attention. Sinferno was a piece of antic invention, one of Beauties and Beasts 185 those shows where we don't know exactly why the plastic lobsters are dropping from the ceiling, but it works on some subconscious level. It's a dream world like childhood; things befall one. The piece ended with the daughter getting what she wanted: milk (which she poured over her head) and a drum to play instead of the "dick bass." She un-haunted her house. A good thing, too. I figure she's the same girl who takes a gun down one day and says, "I don't like Mondays." At Taller Latinoamericano, beauty contestants bustled in with their gowns and tuxes. Or pelts. Nine downtown theater venues had entered candidates, with proceeds to benefit the Bad Neighbors Company . And the Ms. Make-Believe Contest certainly had just the absurdity one could want from such an event: partisan judges, scowling beauties, and playful camaraderie between them. MC Kimberly Flynn introduced "celebrity judges" Ellie Covan, John Kelly, and Carmelita Tropicana, who would choose "the woman or man who can really make people believe." Then the inevitable talent contest began, with a piercing scream. It was Judge Tropicana, shrieking and throwing herself at the first beauty, "Sonya" (Ms. wow Cafe). "Son-ya! Son-ya!" the audience chanted, as she began striding down the runway in beret and shades, toting a machine gun. Sonya then displayed her talent as best she could, given that the proletariat wouldn't have time to rise in the space of three minutes. "Talent is an instrument of the patriarchy!" she announced. Behind her on a little pink table sat the evening's grand prize: a lifetime supply of styling mousse. The audience swooned for everyone. They loved the beauties with attitude-from Jennifer Blowdryer (Ms. Smutfest) to Matthew Courtney (Mr. ABC No Rio) to Jasmine (Ms. Dixon Place). Buttheyreallyloved the sweetness personified by "Inga" (Ms. Atlantic Theatre Company), disarming charm dressed in a Brunhilde outfit. To make a long pageant short, Inga walked off with the crown, dangling it from one of the horns on her helmet, dabbing at her make-believe tears of joy. Part of the round-robin evening at BAM that opened New Music America , Industrial Symphony No. 1 had the precarious excitement of an evening at Franklin Furnace, despite a much larger budget. Film director 186 REGENERATE ART David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Dune, Eraserhead) created an industrial wasteland that gradually...