Sacramentans love their "Second Saturdays." To clarify, on the second Saturday of each fair-seasoned month, Midtown throws its own little art and wine party. Did I say little? Numerous storefronts beam aglow, gallery doors stand ajar, and pedestrians spill off the sidewalks and mill through establishments, crisscrossing the streets. Their strides weave in and out of various performers, the acoustic guitars rattling, drums beating, full bands raging with full amplification.
It's hip. It's chic. It's the new Sacramento man, and everybody's doing it.
Party crashers are always welcome, and my often estranged but never departed friend from Placerville, currently wrapping a summer tour with two other performers, found his way into the Atelier Boutique on this second Saturday of August 2008. I can't explain the excitement I felt at the idea of seeing a gargantuan figure from my past showcasing his passions during such a painfully popular local time slot.
And for a moment, let me digress and slap a disclaimer across the whole notion of performance art. True, there are some questionable aspects, and an open mind is absolutely mandatory if you're to glean any enjoyment from the processes of its presentation. I've learned that marching into the audience with any disassociation or disconnection from the "art" only ensures I sit for a seemingly endless stint in hell. The disclaimer is this: you must permit yourself to let the art exist and affect or you'll wind up hating yourself for agreeing to attend. That said, beyond the pure support of my friend and his passion, I bought in to the work and the effort and the time and the sweat of the performance, and entered the show prepared to do whatever necessary to help and believe.
It was a good thing I decided to engage because the It Speaks project's second summer of the Hello Show, or Hello Sacramento! as the title changes based on location, isn't a scripted performance. The format best resembles a traveling talent show; a hilarious emcee (tonight it was Janice, a librarian breaking the acts of citizens from the fictional town of Strawberry), introduces a parade of awkward small-town residences performing odd-ball gags, quirky songs, interpretive dance, even a short lecture on the cosmos. Like the name, the show adapts to the location.
The spoofs are varied, the characters all unalike. The natural feel and flow of the unscripted show is engaging, and throughout the performance, it's clear the actors are working their professionally-trained asses off. Their physicality and concentration is intense. The audience responds, creating drum beats to "jam" with the instrumentless rock band; they provide nouns, verbs, and adjectives for the MC to create her very own location-specific song; they cringe during the close-quarter acrobatics; they hold the floor and liven the Q & A sessions. It's not a troupe of drama club dropouts; these are hardworking students, working to earn advanced degrees and MFAs from prestigious schools.
The show garnered strong support, 10 or 15 of the young and open minded filled the cramped foyer behind Ateliers. It was great to watch old and new friends dedicate their night to the pursuit of their passion. Watching these out-of-town performers come out for the River City's favorite street party and share themselves was a joy. They were happy, eager to explore, and clearly live comfortably outside a world of fixation or patterned predictability.
***
So all this art, all this wholesome community engagement, all the sweat, blood, and tears comes with a price. Tonight's price was the opening act--the only opening act on the Hello Show tour through California. Liken the situation to a band rolling through small venues in major cities; essentially, the Hello Show had little knowledge of the first act.
She's on stage with a microphone, its chord wired through an effects pedal. She's plugged a discman into a large amplifier. She's in a loose red dress that gives way to green tights covering her awkward legs until they reach her pigeon-toed feet, covered in dusty, ruby slippers. A conspicuous red mask covers her face. She pushes play on the discman, beginning distorted and weird selections. There's even a warped version of a track from Mary Poppins which allows her to wander through the audience and stroke particular faces (mine included). The tracks go on, and she marches around the room and maintains a dialogue through her microphone. There's no telling what she says; it's nothing but garbled, echoed squeals. I'm told this part is pretty regular.
The "show" persists. She marches on, pulling up her dress to show off the panties she's wearing over the tights. There's a patch of pink fur, like a chunk of the Abominable Snowman's hair in faded dye, that she runs her hands through. The audience giggles at her new gag, but I find that it the kind of thing even an open mind can't remedy. The track blares and muffled screeching goes on.
And then, this disaster starts falling apart. She chirps away from under her red mask, and down go the tights, interior underwear along with it. She stumbles around in her red dress, the tights stuck at her knees. And her shedding reveals her red maxi pad, resting on her partly-removed knickers suspended between her knees. I can't leave because my friends are going on. Everyone else is letting her stumble around like it's something they've seen before, but they couldn't have possibly seen this before.
And there's the drone of her eeeee eeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeee from the amp. And there's he yelling and her red mask; and her red, thrift garb and her faded ruby shoes; and her red aunt Flow. She cocks her hips to the side and pulls the pad from its suspension. It's there between her thumb and index finger, and as the crowd squirms, she flings it into the audience, cringing just feet away!
The man next to me leaned in and asked, "Are you okay?" NO! NO! NO! I think, as the show goes on. Really, I respond, "Should I be?" He tells me he's seen her "performance" before, and he's never seen that, but admits he's a bit bored now.
It must've been her grand finale, because her yelp session ended and she took her bow.
Thankfully, the artists of Hello Sacramento took the stage, unabashed, and saved the night, the art, and all that is legitimate in the world. At the show's conclusion, other locals told me yes, the opening act's cycle was legit, and no, it has never happened before. "She's smashed hamburgers in people's faces and thrown eels on the crowd though." Art? Do you mean harassment? Does the shock factor include line crossing?
So before the nightmares begin, I write this solemn blog and reach out to my friends.
Dear Hello Show: Take me back to Strawberry!
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