ROCK
Michael Kearns at Circle Theatre December 6
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In Rock Kearns plays four characters who have a relationship with Hudson spiritually, metaphorically, or literally. We never actually see Hudson himself; however, we do get a kind of Rashomon portrait of him as we listen to the stories each of the characters tells. Rocky (from Little Rock) changes his name the day Hudson dies, which is also the day he loses his virginity, the day he realizes that like Hudson he is gay, and the day he leaves his mother for good. Another character is Reggie, an aging self-described queen who was Hudson’s acting, voice, and “leading male” coach; his story reveals the climate in Hollywood during the 50s, when Hudson was struggling to emerge as a straight male lead, and also the dark underbelly of gay culture. Another character, Marilyn Monroe (speaking from the “other side”), recounts a late-night phone conversation with Hudson in which she consoles him and encourages him to be a better actor by acting from his “truest self” and allowing the “little girl” inside him to come out. The fourth character (and my personal favorite) is Kearns himself, who shows us the painful reality of being blacklisted in Hollywood.
The Marilyn Monroe bit is fascinating more for its intent than anything else. Kearns makes use of two sides of her public persona: as a sort of heroic white goddess, the champion of the feminine in our culture, and as yet another sacrificial lamb, someone who died to perpetuate the myth of the ultramacho Kennedy cult. A powerful message in both Intimacies and Rock is Kearns’s idea that our culture does not allow the archetypal feminine aspect of men’s personalities to surface. Just as Tennessee Williams used the fallen, crazed, vain persona of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire to reveal a dramatic truth, Kearns also uses characters we might not like at first glance to reveal his vision of a deeper reality.
The following week choreographer-performance artist Robyn Orlin (who’s from South Africa) and artist Claudia Vera (from Argentina) tackled similar issues in How Beautiful Is the Princess Salome Tonight. Unlike Kearns’s work, in which persona and presence in the performing space is all, here one looks less at persona and more at the piece and the environment as a whole. The lighting, costuming, and installation were superb, and Ames Hall and Ken Thompson, who also appeared in the piece, created an interesting counterpoint to Orlin’s rather possessed persona, Salome.
At this point Orlin emerges from beneath the table and raises her arm into the air, then touches her body, looking levelly, almost beguilingly at the audience–rather as a mischievous child might look at an adult before dropping a glass, letting it smash to the floor. She looks a little like an Egon Schiele study of a woman: provocative, erotic, yet full of angles, with a square jaw, thin and sensual lips, and devouring eyes. She gropes and fondles herself, touching her stomach, her groin, her breasts. She picks up a plate, rubs it in a circular motion all over her body, puts it down. She sets every place at the table in this way. Then she throws her head back, lifts her legs, puts both hands into a fist and almost beats her sex with her fists, stopping herself midway and turning over. There is a tightening in her jaw, and a frightening set to her eyes: she looks sad and angry.
