Bay area avant chanteuse Amy X Neuburg’s new album the Secret Life of Subways (picked up by the boundary-busting Stakland label for distribution) is disjointed, it’s rhythmically pretty much impossible to follow and for that matter pretty much impossible to follow at all unless you have headphones on. It’s also funny, and it tells a story. It’s a very ambitious, dizzying ride with a distinctly 80s feel, evocative of the first years when the avant garde was trying on a punk ethos and the line between new wave and experimental got fuzzier and fuzzier. ”I’m a Vaseline lens girl,” Neuburg announces, and she’s not kidding.”  She may sing with a dramatic, operatic delivery but it’s never clear where she’s going – which is part of the fun.  Backed by the Cello ChiXtet - Jessica Ivry, Elaine Kreston and Elizabeth Vandervennet - she creates a loosely thematic series of surreal, theatrical, Bowie-esque ignettes and epics, some harsh and aggressive, others ambient and atmospheric to the point of wooziness.The music matches the lyrics, often in an extreme fashion, accentuating the weirdness or unease of the storyline – although just as frequently it can be comedic.

“I can’t spill this one because everybody would drown,” Neuburg states emphatically as the story begins, alternately ambient and insistently staccato. “Do not lean on the doors or you might lose your focus,” which more than telegraphs the plot, if you’re paying attention. “Too many brokers in here, too many deals on the line.” The cellos grow menacing, and Neuburg hits her octave pedal for a horror movie effect.

“Everyone knows that beautiful is the opposite of smart,” she rails cynically as the strings rise to meet her on the third track, the understatedly titled, Kate Bush-inflected Difficult. The story continues with the apprehensively scurrying, disassociative Someone Else’s Sleep and then follows a crescendo to a catchy, somewhat haunting circular theme on The Gooseneck, a series of cynical stream-of-consciousness observations on conspicuous consumption. She hits a stunning faux-Broadway vocal coda on This Loud, brings things down for the baroque-themed Be Careful and then carefully enunciates the menace and exasperation of Body Parts, a requiem that works on several levels. The somewhat self-explanatory Dada Exhibit is actually more coherent than it would seem, a study in sudden rhythmic shifts with a vividly cinematic string interlude and a funny pun at the end. The cd closes with its centerpiece, Shrapnel, a deliberately out-of-focus eulogy for a dead relationship floating on layers of vocals and an eerie choir of processed, disembodied voices at the end. There’s a sort of bonus track here, an imaginative, absolutely spot-on cover of Back in NYC by Genesis which while it resembles Rasputina far more than Peter Gabriel, maintains and even heightens the nonplussed, confrontational vibe of the original. It’s an apt choice, because fans of prime-era art-rock like The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway ought to go for this album as much as the Bang on a Can crowd will. Watch this space for NYC dates.

“

Performed at the DeArtes UFPR (departament of visual arts) as the final work for the sculpture’s atelier of Marilia Diaz. November, 2009.

Photos by Diogo Messias

Go ahead!  Judge that book by its cover.

• Gosh I love a good mystery … and, this one involves a fast food sculpture.
• Farm raised fish that are pretty okay!  Good.
• Wow: “Starting on July 9, 2009, Emily Zinnemann relinquished control of her life to the whims of 52  strangers, friends, & acquaintances. Each participant receives a budget & a full week to enjoy as s/he pleases, choreographing Emily’s daily routine from breakfast to bedtime.  The experiment’s progress is fully mapped on this website.”
• I want a waterless washing machine, and I want it NOW!
• This doesn’t particularly surprise me.  I’m convinced that the people who are the most afraid of germs, also get sick all the time.
• This looks surprisingly yummy …. and CHEAP!
• This “Obama Weather” thingie is pretty hilarious
• Coconuts banned on the beaches of Rio?! What the hay?
• Awesome glass sculpture of an octopus.
• Believe it or not, there are nine other currencies that are doing worse than the dollar.
• Technology isolating us from one another?  Hooey!
• Tough economic times, but women leading in pursuit of higher education.
• I’m going to have to defend Guy Fieri too … I love “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives!”  “I want to go to a party at Food TV superstar Guy Fieri’s house. I imagine pyramids of glistening pork ribs and snow shovels full of hush puppies. I dream of patiently standing in line by the pool waiting for margaritas to be blasted into my open mouth by a fire hose while AC/DC blares over the loudspeaker.”
• Tip for great gravy … a keeper I’d say.
• I really really really really really want this bed!
• Isn’t bigotry all too often made to be ‘about the children?’
• Metabolism boosters that I will assume that with slight changes can be adjusted for women, too.
• “I just cannot get excited about sexual misbehavior that is never going to be investigated by a legislative committee. “
• Terrible: “Allegations of sexual exploitation and other crimes have dogged U.N. peacekeeping missions almost since their inception in 1948″
• “A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people.” --Abraham Lincoln
• Viagra dessert? Mmkay.
• And, a water sommelier?? Sheez!

The Austin Babtist Women, who have been active for a couple of decades, mix camp and tradition.

There are very few real performance artists today; aside from a singer’s capacity to produce great vocals, there are so many qualities that distinguish the silver from the rust. For one thing, are we supposed to herd together those brilliant musicians who not only sing brain-numbing music but also write it, produce it and creative direct it? Design their own clothing, and create an entire artistic Haus? I am, of course, talking about Lady Gaga; aside from the fact that she is an explosion of creative genius, I am particularly fond of her because she is not afraid to be an activist as well as a performance artist. But I digress; all talk and no play is fun, so here you have it. Gaga’s So Happy I Could Die, sped up 25%. I think it is simply sensational, how even when sped up her voice maintains flawless musical qualities; even her vibratos can be discerned.

So Happy I Could Die by  Synesthesiac

One Sunday in December 2009.
At Imprenta.

To all of the fangirls flustered that James Franco had destroyed his looks by dying his hair black and growing it out, BEHOLD: James at the Brooks Brothers holiday celebration which benefited St. Jude.  (Yay, St. Jude! One of my childhood friends had treatment there until she passed away a few years ago and they really were a rock for her and her family.)

There are some more pictures beyond the cut, but the real reason for this post was for an interesting article James penned for the Wall Street Journal about why his guest appearance on “General Hospital” is considered performance art.  The article is a pretty interesting read, and he obviously knows the history of art (I recognize a lot of the pieces he mentions from my art history classes) and puts up a pretty good case for why his stint is performance art.  But what do you guys think?

Article can be read in it’s entirety after the cut, along with all the sources and more pictures.

 was recently treated to an early prototype of a dessert that Marina Abramović, the “grandmother of performance art,” created with the pastry chef Dominique Ansel. It’s a cylindrical pastry with a lychee center sprinkled over with chili powder and raw gold. I was instructed to kiss a napkin that had been printed with a square of gold powder that would transfer to my face before eating the dessert. This way the dessert would pass through a golden gateway before it was ingested. I did as told, then suggested to the chef that it needed more chili. Was this art?

I have been obsessed with performance art for over a decade—ever since the Mexican performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña came to visit my class at Cal Arts summer school. I finally took the plunge and experimented with the form myself when I signed on to appear on 20 episodes of “General Hospital” as the bad-boy artist “Franco, just Franco.” I disrupted the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because no matter how far I got into the character, I was going to be perceived as something that doesn’t belong to the incredibly stylized world of soap operas. Everyone watching would see an actor they recognized, a real person in a made-up world. In performance art, the outcome is uncertain—and this was no exception. My hope was for people to ask themselves if soap operas are really that far from entertainment that is considered critically legitimate. Whether they did was out of my hands.

As Ms. Abramović told me over our dessert tasting, performance art is all about context. “If you bake some bread in a museum space it becomes art, but if you do it at home you’re a baker.” Likewise, when I wear green makeup and fly across a rooftop in “Spider-Man 3,” I’m working as an actor, but were I to do the same thing on the subway platform, a host of possibilities would open up. Playing the Green Goblin in the subway would no longer be about creating the illusion that I am flying. It would be about inserting myself in a familiar space in such a way that it becomes stranger than fiction, along the lines of what I’m doing on “General Hospital.”

 

James Franco Interviews Artist Marina Abramovic

4:22Actor James Franco visits performance artist Marina Abramovic. He discusses her art and samples one of her edible creations.

Performance art is enjoying a moment of validation from the art world establishment. Next month, the Guggenheim Museum will showcase the work of Tino Sehgal, the Berlin-based artist whose “staged situations” have involved uniformed museum guards dancing around a gallery singing, “This is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary!” The renowned art fair Art Basel Miami dedicated evenings to performances by visual artists, including Claire Fontaine, whose work consists of a Body Opponent Bag (BOB) punch mannequin that professional fighters will beat silly. The P.S.1 museum in New York’s Queens borough is in the middle of “100 Years,” a three-week-long series chronicling the past century of performance art, so all the oldies but goodies can be studied.

Minoru Niizuma/Courtesy Yoko OnoYoko Ono’s ‘Cut Piece’ (1964)

When most Americans think of “performance art,” they probably think of its golden age in the 1970s and the early 1980s. That was the time when the artist Chris Burden was creating pieces that entailed being shot in the arm or crucified on a Volkswagen Beetle and Marina Abramović and her one-named partner Ulay were performing “Rest Energy,” a piece where they faced each other and held a taut bow with an arrow pointing at Ms. Abramović’s heart.

But performance art of this vein got its start as early as the 1950s, when art students started putting down their paintbrushes and cameras and turning to their bodies as instruments. Art critic Harold Rosenberg defined Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning as “action painters” and their canvases as records of a performance. Art was no longer to be viewed passively, but something to engage with. Hans Namuth’s 1951 film “Jackson Pollock 51″ shows Pollock improvising with his painting, making marks and then responding to those marks. Clearly, the process had become part of the art. It was only a matter of time before artists would start discarding the final piece altogether, like Yoko Ono’s “Cut Piece” (1965), where the audience was invited to cut Ms. Ono’s clothes, or Allan Kaprow’s “Fluids” (1967), where a team constructed an enormous ice structure, only to leave it to melt.

Performance art can seem pretentious, but it can also be quite mischievous and playful. Just as Marcel Duchamp rocked the art establishment in 1917 with his found urinal called “Fountain,” performance artists of the 1960s and 1970s presented entire practices and occupations as art. In today’s version, the artist Fritz Haeg packages lawn care as art—his ongoing series “Edible Estates” consists of designing and implementing ecologically productive front lawns. As Mr. Haeg said at a talk at Columbia University last month, “Being an artist is the one profession where you can wake up and say, ‘What do I want to learn about and participate in today?’ ” What could be more fun than that?

Becky Cohen; Courtesy of the artistGuillermo Gomez- Peña during a performance of his 1988 piece ‘El Border Brujo’

In her 1973 piece “Rhythm 10,” Ms. Abramović, the co-inventor of the lychee-and-gold pastry, recorded herself playing five-finger fillet, often cutting her fingers in the process. Then she played the recording back in front of a live audience and recreated the “performance” with the finger slicing put in the exact same place. Thus, the second time around may be a recreation of an act that already took place, but when she cuts herself the second time she still bleeds, and the past action is also taking place in the present tense. It’s trippy stuff.

Most performance pieces before the 1970s were not well recorded. All that remains of some works are scraps of various media. This wasn’t simply a result of oversight. Chris Burden never intended his early pieces to be filmed because he was concerned that the films would be seen as the work rather than as a record of the work. He was more interested in completing the act than getting the greatest number of people to see it. He worried that people would regard the film as the full experience when anyone who has watched a stage play on film knows, it is never the same as seeing it live.

The gulf between film and performance art has dwindled in the years since Mr. Burden crawled naked across glass. These days, contemporary performances often are staged for a camera and the record of the act becomes primary. The world of performance art has incorporated many of the materials and methods that it once shunned. Contemporary performance artists such as Matthew Barney, Paul McCarthy and Ryan Trecartin depend heavily on film and video to make their work. Mr. Barney relies on Hollywood special effects to achieve his elaborate costume and set design. And Mr. McCarthy’s ketchup-and-mayonnaise-loving elves and madmen would be hard to conceive without the precedent of Disney films.

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Courtesy of the artist/Sean Kelly Gallery, NYMarina Abramović’s 2009 piece ‘The Kitchen I—Homage to Saint Therese,

When New York’s Museum of Modern Art celebrated the opening of the performance-art retrospective at its sister museum P.S.1 last month, the band Fischerspooner put on a concert in the museum’s main atrium. Casey Spooner, a singer who contains great passion under his cool exterior, stopped the show and complained that the audience wasn’t engaging with the music enough. Later it was revealed that the complaints were all part of the act and the entire piece will later be presented as a film about a fictional musician.

The folks at “General Hospital” informed me that in three days of filming we backlogged enough material for 23 episodes. There will be one more step. After all of the Franco episodes are aired, my character’s storyline will be advanced in a special episode filmed in a “legitimate” New York gallery. One more layer will be added to this already layer-heavy experiment. If all goes according to plan, it will definitely be weird. But is it art?

—James Franco is an actor who appeared in “Milk” and the “Spiderman” movies. He is currently enrolled in NYU’s MFA filmmaking program and Columbia’s MFA program for fiction writing.

I hate watermarks.

sources: http://www.gettyimages.com/Search/Search.aspx?contractUrl=2&language=en-US&family=editorial&p=james%20franco&assetType=image&ep=3#1

http://www.welovesoaps.net/2009/12/james-franco-at-brooks-brothers.html

“Progress”

Tell me, does my being miles away feel as comforting as you’d wish?

And we all fall down, deep into the under tow beneath the upper town smiles of a frowning city. So lost you are when no life you’ve lived. Diamonds only last as long as they do before you throw them down the drain. And to halfheartedly remove them is a complete waste of time so save the energy for walking out the door, you need the exercise anyways.

Your prom night’s bobby pins lie stuck between my eyelids and the thoughts of garbage cans, bloodied hands, tomorrows of golden sands and one last memory of holding hands. But all is to be extinguished by the snowcap of blow that suddenly bites much stronger than ever before.

I never knew the nose to feel this way. I never knew of such great dismay.

The requiem for which my mind yearns is too great for you to comprehend and pretentious, I am not. It seems so easy to overlook the good in these eyes, it seems so easy to watch your innocence die. How does it feel to become the rest? Shamefully breaking away from the nothingness in which could relate to you, you are now just another sheep among my sleep and the ugliest to say the least. Your horrible skin so smug against your frail, scoliotic body…with that ear so tightly tucked against your neck. It is evident your flaws are so much more apparent.

I swear it is the alcohol speaking, my mother’s thoughts leaking…seeping into my mind. I am becoming her, relevant to dirt and spraying all the most quiet of violent words I am too sure will hurt. There is an uneasiness to all I am doing but the sureness is overwhelming and I cannot give in to the thought of dialing those digits once more. I am most certain I am forgotten and that in you lies a subtle hope of my future’s rotting but rest assured I am doing much better than all of the sheltered fucks out there. With my mind at it’s most progressive and my heart relentlessly depressive, I am combing the perfect mixture of misery and happiness. Imagine this…the most obtuse of angles in the sound of dissonance becoming more beautiful than ever before, creating such a listenable resonance.

This is my life, and it’s much better than yours.

-Mike Detelj ‘09

]]> http://mdetelj.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/poem-letting-go/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:51:35 +0000 Mike Detelj http://mdetelj.wordpress.com/2009/12/19/poem-letting-go/

“Letting Go”

Can it be said that the dearly devoted are taking personal notes on a skill level too far a par for us to match, let alone conquer?

Or are we just so blind to our own ability?

When your hand comes to touch this heart, have no fear because you already know what has begun. A hurtful journey into a waste of time where “x” doesn’t mark the spot for anything more than your next way out.

So brash, I can be, but lay waste it’s unattractiveness and look into these woodsy eyes once more. And if you can stare past the brush and see your naked reflection…it means we have done something right. I promise these lips only leak the truth, I promise I’m only to give them to you.

But come the day that love is too much a distortion and is lacking all practical proportion, feel free to step out of the puddles and look towards the ocean. Letting go is not such a hard thing to do, especially when all we are tied to is wind and water; pure elements and nothing original.

-Mike Detelj ‘09

Who Creates the Limits?

Marina Abramovic is one grossly underrated performance artist. This is a statement that I can now make, having just learned of her recently myself. She is perhaps best known for her collaborative work with fellow performance artist Ulay, but it is her own personal pieces that have the strongest effect on this art geek. Whether her piece is a matter of seconds, minutes, or hours, Abramovic never seems to fail to kick the very core of me with her frank sexuality and personal destruction. The woman can appear before you as the most alluring of figures, only to degrade you and herself to nothing more than a mere joke. She can figuratively cut you as she nicks her own flesh, bruise you exhaustively as she drudges herself down to nothing on her pristine white stage. She is comedy and tragedy rolled into one, a farcical disaster, a fabulous calamity. The woman will show no mercy for herself or anyone else, and you are by no means an exception.

In case you aren’t familiar with her collaborative work with Ulay, here is a slight recap. Marina Abramovic and Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen) met in 1976 in Amsterdam, where they both discovered that they were born on the same day. Marina says that for her there was an instant attraction. For a span of about 15 years they continued to create pieces that dealt with human interaction in various forms; many of their pieces involved the exchange (and destruction) of energy from one person to another. Other themes included reliance, trust, and testing the limits of a strong bond that two people may share. Here is a link to one of their more famous pieces, “Expansion in Space”.

Marina’s own pieces often speak much more about isolation, desperation, and internal conflict. She will switch from a seemingly high sense of self to an apparent self-loathing in one breath, sometimes stroking her skin sensually and sometimes tearing at it with knives and other menacing items. One can never know if she is just that remarkably comfortable with herself, or if she simply never has been.

Below is a link to her video piece The Star (1999), which illustrates a remarkable range of the different humors, agonies, and absurdities that she expresses in her performances. Though this seems to cover a wide range of her work, it is not really even a scratch on the surface. She has created so many effective pieces over the course of her life that one cannot sit down and discuss them all without putting aside a good amount of time. This is especially the case when considering her newer works, which of course are not mentioned in the  video due to the date of production.

The Star (1999)

Lastly I would like to post a link to a wonderful question-answer session with Marina Abramovic, conducted by the Tate Channel. It’s hard to not be at least slightly inspired by her answer to the question, “how far is too far?”.

Tate Channel interview with Marina Abramovic

~

Women Who Rock

Instead of discussing one single band this time around, I think that it’s time for more of a ‘themed’ music post. Here are a few songs from various (highly obscure) female-fronted punk bands that are all about women’s traditional domestic obligations and how they feel about them. Enjoy!

Vital Disorders- Let’s Talk About Prams
The Petticoats- Normal
Androids of Mu- Bored Housewives

Find out by viewing the 5 minute performance piece through this link:

The Meaning of Life is…

Johanna Went is an American performance artist who primarily works in the Los Angeles area. She started her career in the late 1970s as a punk musician, and began performing as part of a street theater troupe that traveled America and Europe. Further predominant elements of Went’s shows are the use of elaborate costumes, which Went herself creates from various found objects, live musical backing, visual shock and the use of artificial blood. Johanna still performs.

The Hyena LP was first released in 1982, on the Poshboy Records label.

20:48 minutes, 7 tracks. 320 kbps.

Look man we went swimming and i found this barrel that said toxic something or other… it was rusty.  Anyway man I thought it was probably high fructose corn syrup and I knew i shouldn’t eat that crap but I was hungry… it turned out to be a barrel of McDonalds fry oil mixed with high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, EDTA, ground styrofoam, and some red dye.  Now look at us man… you think you could help me out with some change?

The wonderful Suzan Shutan has agreed to help me with my resume/cv/statements in exchange for web design and video work.  I couldn’t think of a better collaboration.  Here is one of the many projects (and its many iterations) that I am attempting to catalog for said documents…

Tallit Rebozo, from the series Hiddur Mitzvah, Quilted, Embroidered, Woven, and Recycled Fabric, 2006

Comodification Series: Modeling Tallit Rebozo, Performance 2006

Comodification Series: Maya Carrying Maya, Photo Collage, 2006

Gringa Loves Guatemala, YouTube Video, 2007

Maya Carrying Maya, YouTube background, 2009

Maya Carrying Maya, Twitter background, 2009

Former Myspace Profile Picture, found internet photo (repeated here 3 times), 2006

so I have recently attempted my performance of fountainhead.

I think it went quite well apart from the deserted nature of the gallery. Wish there was more people for me to interact with

ah well, it went good anyway, here’s some photos and the video that I made out of them

remember that the video is not art in itself, purely because I cannot work imovie very well, it is a documentation of the performance.

so yeah, the gallery and the theme park come together and rejoice in celebrations of disney art, commercialism, hypocrisy and joy.

At least he is not that pretentious. Here.

We’ve started consulting and covering events for the umbrella group, the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development. Every December, they hold an annual gala fundraiser, and this year, rather than doing the standard dinner/cocktail event, the CNHED hosted a special theatrical event.

Taking the stories of three distinct people–a recovering heroin addict, a man from El Salvador, and a woman who overcame a lifetime of setbacks to fulfil her dream–DC-area spoken word artists set out to take the stories to the stage. All three stories were well done, and the sold out crowd loved it.

We were excited to be a part of the event, and hurried to get the performance up on the youtube page we maintain for the CNHED. Check out the videos below!

Yes, I am a brave soul. The temperature was in the mid 30’s here in the city of Holy Faith, and I went into a tunnel and danced around; Life is good. It is almost The Solstice, a sacred time, a time of transition, a time of awakening. The winter calls forth a natural hibernation instinct-a time to dream; a drawing in of resources and energies to regenerate for the spring. This photo shoot today spoke to both the reverential shrouding and grateful exuberance of the cyclical process of the light returning. The images reflect the timeless journey of silence and contemplation, emerging into the profound joy and gratitude of re-enlightenment. It is the dark & the light; the  solitude and the wild expansion, the monochromatic and Technicolor thrill of life.

Ted, Akie and I took on James Franco’s General Hospital appearance in this week’s Perpetual Post.

___________________

I was all set to take James Franco down a peg or two about his heavy-handed foray into the world of performance art, particularly since it’s coupled with a pet peeve of mine—an article he wrote for the Wall Street Journal discussing the ways in which performance art is ‘enjoying a moment of validation from the art world establishment’. The editorial, which EntertainmentWeekly.com snidely noted “probably got a B+ when it was first handed in as university coursework”, was peppered with references to other performance artists and their work, which he referred to as “trippy stuff.” Now, if I want to learn more about the history of performance art, James Franco and the Wall Street Journal are two of the very last sources I’m going to turn to. In fact, the idea of James Franco writing an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about performance art sounds suspiciously like performance art itself.

Still, I’m not made of stone. I went to Bard College, after all, which abounded with students who did silly, stupid and awesome things in the name of art. They experimented; they took risks, they threw themselves passionately into creative works. Even when they irritated me, which they mostly did, I generally respected their moxie, and in that regard I don’t want to discourage a mainstream Hollywood actor from bringing a little weirdness into the world. It’s quirky, it’s unexpected, it’s fearless. At least he’s not making a cookie cutter romantic comedy about going home to meet his girlfriend’s parents for a weekend only to discover that they’re dinosaur vampires. He’s trying new and different things, and for that, I applaud him.

That said, I do think that Franco’s project was poorly thought out, mainly because its premise is flawed. In his editorial, Franco explains that by starring in a 20 episode arc of General Hospital, “I disrupted the audience’s suspension of disbelief, because no matter how far I got into the character, I was going to be perceived as something that doesn’t belong to the incredibly stylized world of soap operas. Everyone watching would see an actor they recognized, a real person in a made-up world…My hope was for people to ask themselves if soap operas are really that far from entertainment that is considered critically legitimate.”

Now, Franco claims that he wants people to ask themselves if soap operas are more ‘critically legitimate’ than we think. Yet by engaging in this experiment he has already labeled soap operas as less valid than other, more ‘legitimate’ entertainment. By claiming that viewers would be disrupted from their soaps by seeing ‘an actor they recognized’ on their show, or ‘a real person in a made-up world’, Franco sets apart the made up world of General Hospital from the made up world of Spider Man 3. When Tom Cruise—also an internationally recognized celebrity—plays a secret agent in the Mission Impossible movies, he is also asking us to suspend our disbelief while watching a ‘real person in a made up world’. It’s called acting—just like they do in soap operas! Assuming that his presence on a soap may ‘disrupt’ those particular viewers is being pretty patronizing of those viewers.

Not only that, but soap opera viewers are used to having characters get replaced all the time by completely different actors and actresses. They’re used to watching a character die in a sky-diving accident and then reappear three seasons later haunted by an evil twin. Susan Lucci has been on All My Children for going on forty years now—and still looks exactly the same. Talk about disrupting your suspension of belief! Trust me, soap opera fans can roll with the punches.

Still, I know your heart is in the right place, James Franco. You’re into some neat stuff, and you’re enrolled in film school, and you’re thinking, and you’re pushing boundaries, and you have a heartstoppingly beautiful smile and rock-hard abs. I’m willing to go easy on you this time. Just don’t let it happen again—at the very least, the next time you feel like doing a performance piece, how about showing up on my doorstep wearing a leather kilt and holding a plate of butter? Honey, you can break my fourth wall any time.

Janelle Rominski, NBC Chicago Street Team

Chicago is an amazing city for many shows to shine. Whether it is a pre-Broadway production, post-Broadway tour or a one night only concert – this city has many wonderful options to choose from.

With Guy Laliberté, Founder and CEO of Cirque du Soleil

Cirque du Soleil’s Banana Shpeel: A New Twist on Vaudeville is previewing at the Chicago Theatre until January 3, 2010 before it embarks on a new journey to Broadway in early February. The show has mixed reviews. It’s heavy on comedy and choreography, blending slapstick with tap and hip-hop dance forms. The show’s plot revolves around a producer named Schmelky who is trying to put together a variety show. This production is very different than other Cirque du Soleil shows. There aren’t as many aerialists, contortionists, etc. Come in with an open mind.

Another show that’s set to appear on Broadway is The Addams Family Musical, currently playing at the Ford Center/Oriental Theatre until January 10, 2010. Veteran actors Nathan Lane (Gomez) and Bebe Neuwirth (Morticia) star in this unique musical. The Addams Family musical takes place as Wednesday Addams is older and the show’s two hot topics were love and sex. Lane was amazing portraying Gomez and Neuwirth did a decent job as Morticia.

With Zachary James who plays Lurch and Kevin Chamberlin who plays Uncle Fester in The Addams Family Musical

In an interview, The Addams Family musical actors Zachary James (Lurch) and Kevin Chamberlin (Uncle Fester) noted the show has been cut down 30-minutes from the original time. It will be interesting to see what the show is like once it graces the Broadway stage.

The New Mel Brooks Musical, Young Frankenstein, just wrapped up their tour in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre last night. The production began on Broadway where 484 shows were performed. The musical features Desperate Housewives guest actor, Roger Bart, as Dr. Frankenstein. The actors in Young Frankenstein were brilliant and notable songs included “Puttin’ On The Ritz”, “Transylvania Mania” and “He Vas My Boyfriend”.

With Kleetus, Guy Fieri's friend and sous chef

The Guy Fieri Road Show stopped for an evening of fun at the Rosemont Theatre. Fieri is known for hosting Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on the Food Network. He says the show “is food, rock n’ roll and everything they won’t let me do on TV!”

The opener for Fieri was Australian native and World Champion Flair Bartender, Hayden “Woody” Wood. Wood was dancing, clapping and twirling bottles during his presentation. He made apple spice martinis, pear margaritas and eggnog.

Once Fieri took the stage, he got the audience dancing to good ol’ rock music. A DJ was supplying all the tunes while Fieri shared his cooking stories, Thanksgiving turkey mishaps and answering questions from the crowd. Fieri also had a karaoke contest and pulled members of the audience up on stage to sing for prizes.

Coming soon to Chicago theatres near you are the following shows: In The Heights (which opens tomorrow), The 101 Dalmations Musical, Mama Mia!, Annie, Dreamgirls, Billy Elliot The Musical and more!

For ticket information, visit www.Ticketmaster.com or www.BroadwayInChicago.com.

Want more Rominski reads? Read more right HERE!

According to The Los Angeles Times, “Rachel Rosenthal  bills herself simply as a performance artist. That’s about as accurate as calling the Taj Majal a house. The woman is a monument and a marvel. She is a force of nature…She is timeless, ageless, gutsy, quirky, exotic, potentially poignant.”

Back when I was in grad school at the University of Nevada Reno, Rachel Rosenthal came to visit. I didn’t know what to expect, but attending her performance came highly recommended by my friend Helen Jones who ran the Women’s Center. “Don’t miss it,” she said. And I was glad I didn’t. I can still feel the energy with which she filled the room, even if I don’t quite recall the particulars.

Flash forward many years later when another Helen, this one Helen O’Neil, invited me to Rachel Rosenthal’s 83 birthday celebration and book release party.

The DbD Experience: Chance Knows What It’s Doing! DbD, or “Doing by Doing” describes her signature method of teaching improvisational theater. In the 130-page book, the Obie winning performer explores improvisational theater and its relationship to life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in her 34-hour DbD weekend intensive workshops (currently still happening on a bi-annual basis in Los Angeles). This mix of memoir, teaching manual, and manifesto was edited by Kate Noonan and is set for US release December 15 2009 by Routledge (ISBN 978-0-415-55102-1, www.routledge.com).

“Chance is the core of improvisation,” says Rosenthal when crystallizing the point of her teaching methods, “The DbD Experience is about breaking down borders, opening up to the givens, activating the moment, and paying attention to what is.”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I told her. “Unless of course I win that wine blogging contest and go to Portugal–haha!” Well wonders will never cease–I did win that wineblogging contest, went to Portugal, and was just too severely jetlagged to go to LA the day after I returned.

Fortunately, Helen went to Rachel Rosenthal’s 83nd Birthday Bash–and wrote about it for us:

The press was dubbing it “The Cultural Event of the Year” so I was expecting an over-crowded, stuffy event to honor Rachel Rosenthal’s decades of theater and performance art. All I knew was that Rachel did performance art in the 60’s and had a shaved head.

The hosting gallery, Track 16, in the Bergamot Station, Santa Monica CA, avoided décor with just plain white walls. Half the gallery was dedicated to the works for a silent auction that benefited Rosenthal Company’s TOHUBOHU! This new performance troupe, bills itself as an “Extreme Theater Ensemble” where nothing is scripted, rehearsed or repeated.

The event also premièred her new book The DbD Experience – Chance Knows What it’s Doing!, a mix of memoir, philosophical musing, and teaching manual. Here she explored improvisational theater and its relationship to
life, offering a blow-by-blow account of what happens in her DbD weekend intensive workshops.

Among the 83 pieces were works by John Baldessari, Mike Kelley, Robert Rauschenberg, Lita Albuquerque, Eleanor Antin, Judy Baca, Ed Moses and June Wayne. A Ed Ruska was going for $1,000; a happy celebrant won a large painting by The Unknown Heartist, for only $70, which several us felt was the superior piece. Many of the artists who contributed the art to the silent auction were in attendance.

Balloon sculpture, Pali X-mano, (www. pali-x-mano.com) whose works float around Burning Man and Santa Barbara Soltice, was there in his fun spattered pain over-alls, showing off his portfolio, which included a 20¹x20¹ tentacle
balloon that housed a 4-piece band.

Stand out art came from Photographer Lennybruce Lee, Llyn Foulkes collage “Letters to Rachel,” and metal and glass sculpture by George Herms.

While I never saw the Rauschenberg, I did see Clint Steinhauser’s beautiful necklace, “Rachel’s Head” which really showed the love these artists have for her and her powerful inspiration.

This was turning out to be more of a real Birthday party with people cooing over the birthday girl and chiming about her experiences with her.

There was a big cake from the Cake Divas, towering a top the 20 foot table lined with petit fours, gold sprinkled cookies, Croquembouche and chocolate cookies with handwritten ŒR¹s.

The Bar had a lovely supply of Hogarten Beer, White Cosmos and Bitch Bubbly. While Bitch, a grenache from Grateful Palate Imports, is considered by many a for the “label only” wine, the Bitch Bubbly was a lovely very dry Rose which complemented the desert table.

John Fleck MCed.  Performances of mime, vaudeville, and song included Amy Knoles from the California E.A.R. Unit and Jean Paul Monsché of the Mad Alsacians. All rich with accolades to Rachel, with her concluding, that she hoped we all had a lot of money to spend.

The receiving line was long and diverse: Rosenthal’s fame rose in the 1950s as artistic director and performer in her totally improvised “Instant Theater.” In the 1960s and 1970s, she was a pioneer in animal rights issues, and was a founder of “Womanspace,” a hotbed of feminism. Among the guests were her fellow comrades with the look of past battles in their eyes, while young students knelled down beside her with their glowing faces.

And then magically there was a break in the line. I turned to Rachel and mentioned that I just had turned 50 and it was amazing to see her here at 83. She just held my arm with both her hands, looked at me and smiled. Then I felt this great wave of energy. After a timeless moment I walked back to a chair. I sat and absorbed the whirl of joyous energy, strong enough to alter the Bitch Bubbly in my head. And I thought, Wow! does her art carry this energy across to an audience?

The evening closed with Alberto DeAlmar, playing Flaminco guitar in front of the Dosco Indian food truck, while the last of us danced and clapped.

Like The Los Angeles Times says of Rachel, “Rosenthal  bills herself simply as a performance artist. That’s about as accurate as calling the Taj Majal a house. The woman is a monument and a marvel. She is a force of nature…She is timeless, ageless, gutsy, quirky, exotic, potentially poignant.”

I believe ‘em.

Happy Birthday Rachel!

Accounts of Rachel Rosenthal’s Birthday party from the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly help to illuminate this force of nature:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/arts/la-et-rosenthal7-2009nov07,0,499239.story and
http://www.laweekly.com/2009-11-05/stage/rachel-rosenthal-83-and-still-swearing
as do these photos from ARTinfo’s recent shoot:
https://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33160/rachel-rosenthal-celebrates-83-years-with-a-charity-auction
and these images from the birthday bash:
http://jalbum.net/browse/user/album/382184/

Watch this space for an upcoming review of Rachel Rosenthal’s new book, the upcoming performance in February and more.