Joseph Skewers Own Face at Masquerade Ball in Tucson

Joseph is a fascinating artist. He does all manner of art, including face skewering, playing double-reeded woodwind instruments, DJing, painting, dressing up all rad, and being a nice guy. He is one tough mutha. I had the opportunity to record him on my Flip cam at Saturday's warehouse masquerade ball in Tucson, AZ and interview him a few times before and after his performances. Check out his extreme closeup near the end of the video, and what he says when I ask him how much it hurts.

Posted via web from Will Conley's Random Things

Sexy Silk Acrobatics at a Warehouse Masquerade Ball in Tucscon

We got into town two nights ago. Our host Kisani handed Katherine and me each a $2.99 party mask and told us there would be a warehouse masquerade ball that night, replete with silk scarf aerial acrobats, opera singers on stilts, self-mutilation performance artists, live bands and DJs, and much more. There were about 300 people in attendance, most of them wearing all manner of masks. In this video you will see those masks, as well as a clip of the silks performance.

More to come. This blogging thing is hard from the road. Videos take so long to upload and process when you're sitting in a WiFi coffee shop.

Posted via web from Will Conley's Random Things

Orange Commercial: "Blackout"

I was in this commercial as an extra. The set was gigantic. The scene depicted is the 2003 New York City blackout. The advertiser, Orange, which is a major communications company for England, actually paid to clear multiple city blocks in Manhattan to shoot the commercial. I am most definitely not visible, although I might theoretically be in the aerial shot of the huge crowd.

The commercial was made for movie theaters and apparently is played all the time. For you Joanna Newsom fans, she's the background singer. No idea who the narrator or protagonist are, although I had a scene with him that got cut. It's amazing how little footage made it into the final product. The shoot went on for days and days. Whatever. Enjoy:

Stick Dude in Albuquerque

I don't know what this art is called, but this dude is pretty graceful at it. This public park is off Central Ave. SW and 10th St. near downtown, a block away from Java Joe's.

The Shakespeare Lady

The Shakespeare Lady is performing a passage from a play I do not recognize. I am the only patron in attendance. The admission price for the show is two dollars. The venue is a sidewalk.

"What feeble night bird overcome by misfortunes beats at my door?”

It’s a passage from the Robinson Jeffers version of Medea by Euripides – one of the Shakespeare Lady’s signature acts. We are standing outside an overpriced health food store. Customers are going in and out. Nobody stops to listen tonight.

“Can this be that great adventurer, the famous lord of the seas and delight of women, the heir of rich Corinth, this crying drunkard on the dark doorstep?”

The training she received at Bennington College in Vermont and the Yale School of Drama shines through. Her voice is strong and singsong, her physical gestures measured and effective yet sweeping. The lines from the passage seem to be directed at both herself and at the invisible character she is supposed to be addressing. At times, it feels as though she is addressing me. I feel included, somehow.

“Yet you've not had enough.”

No, I have not had enough. I am the feeble night bird. I am the boastful adventurer, the privileged middle class citizen, cut down to size. I hang on her every word. I know where this woman has been. I learned about her from first hand experience, word on the street, talking to the locals, and reading the news. She has a rare form of schizophrenia, an ailment she and someone at UCLA have described as “tactile demons”. She hears voices. They have been tormenting her since her days as a Yale student. Her Master’s Thesis was entitled “A Theatre of Hunger”.

In the early 1980s, she got into a physical argument with the voices and destroyed her apartment. She has been living on the streets and in mental hospitals, women’s shelters, and rooming houses ever since. The business owners around this neighborhood, which just so ironically happens to be the designated “arts district”, don’t like her much. She can get overly assertive. Sometimes she performs so close to the storefronts that the customers have to walk right by her, both coming and going. Apparently, people have complained, because the neighborhood business community is trying to put the kibosh on her performances. She has been arrested, thrown in jail, and tried for trespassing and disturbing the peace numerous times each.

Luckily, she is not all alone in the system. She has won allies through her performances. Many have advocated in the press for leniency for her minor “offenses”. Filmmakers and musicians have created documentaries and music videos in tribute to her. She even has a lawyer friend who defends her pro bono every time she goes to court. Even the mayor of New Haven likes her, and has been quoted as saying he admires the dignity she maintains despite her difficult lifestyle. Still, she continues living her own Theatre of Hunger.

“You have come to drink the last bitter drops. I'll pour them for you."

The rats took over her rooming house last June. The city condemned the place and kicked out all the tenants. I once saw what the place looked like when I myself was looking for a cheap place to live. It was frighteningly filthy. In an abandoned room I saw an open refrigerator, unplugged, with food still inside. The refrigerator was tilting, sadly, on broken feet. I didn’t dare look at the shared shower rooms.

The Shakespeare Lady still performs on the streets. Some say she smokes crack. I don’t judge it. Does your boss ask you what you’re going to spend your money on when he cuts your paychecks? The Shakespeare Lady’s performances are the best deal in town. Her eyes bulge from their sockets when performing, but rest easy and hooded when just walking. Her voice is natural and conversational as she again trots up the street towards me again:

“Hey baby, my name is the Shakespeare Lady,” goes the usual introductory line. “Mind if I read you a poem for a couple of dollars so I can get into a shelter?” By “poem” she means “theatrical performance”. She probably says “poem” because it’s quicker to say when you’re trying to hustle up a rush hour audience.

“Sure, Margaret, I remember you,” I reply, reaching into my pocket.

She readies herself by closing her eyes for a moment. She seems to be crouching internally, as if a cat before the pounce. She launches into the “To be or not to be” monolog from Hamlet. The cat has pounced, and she is clawing. A few lines go by before she is suddenly doing the “I Have a Dream” speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Suddenly the speech has morphed to become the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln. I can’t tell where she made the switches. Is she twisting her lines on purpose, or is this some manifestation of the schizophrenia? Is she confused? And does it even matter? The “mash-up”, if you will, is seamless. A DJ or collage artist should be so proficient at blending the arts of completely many different epochs of human history into one cohesive narrative. The result is a timeless wailing of the soul. A longing, a yearning, a sadness and a strength. For my two bucks, the Shakespeare Lady ain’t holding back.

I, for one, appreciate her performances.

“Thank you, Shakespeare Lady, for throwing a wrench into my day,” I should say. “For making me stop and look somewhere besides straight forward. For making me look up at the sky, where you are looking, Shakespeare Lady. Thank you for speaking loudly, for not being ashamed of yourself, and for being a human being and an actor and alive. Thank you for reminding ‘sane’ people of the raw underbelly of their own psyche. Thank you for all the debts you’ve paid so that I can have this moment with you.”

I never say all that. Instead, it’s just, “Thank you, Margaret.” I look her in the eye, clasp her hand in my two hands when I give her the money, and figure she understands.

“Thanks, baby, you have a good night now.”