A CONSTANT STATE OF DESIRE
Karen Finley’s A Constant State of Desire is like a seance, with Finley acting the medium extraordinaire. Finley delivers a series of monologues–for lack of a better term–in a feverish, incantatory cadence meant to evoke the spirits of the characters described. But she does not seem interested in bringing them to theatrical “life” as fully rounded psychological beings. Instead Finley the performer is present throughout, letting the words of her characters–at times funny, bitter, horrifying, brutal–spill out as urgently as if she’s been possessed.
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She even began the show four times, all the while ironically acknowledging that she could only really start the show once. The first three times seemed like charming “planned accidents”: she came onstage, welcomed us, chatted about starting the show, then left the stage and reentered to “start the show.” The fourth restart offered a genuine surprise, when Finley suddenly noticed a police officer standing at the side of the stage. After refusing to continue until he left, she gave us a sly grin and said, “He probably heard I’m the girl with the yams,” a reference to another piece in which she stuffs yams in various orifices.
Taken one step further, this image becomes not just horrifying but infuriating. Finley tells us that the woman cannot blame the doctors for what they have done to her but blames herself–for “the way she projects her femininity.” As happens too often in our culture, the woman here can see only herself as the cause of her own humiliation, becoming the perpetrator as well as the victim.
