<\/p>\n
By Rachel Straus<\/p>\n
Downtown New York nightlife is as good a destination for surveying America\u2019s fixation with youth culture as there is. But last week, two established performance artists presented works created for downtown venues that focused on a most anti-youthful subject: Death. Young Jean Lee wrote and performed \u201cWe\u2019re Gonna Die\u201d at Joe\u2019s Pub. John Kelly brought back to P.S. 122 his \u201cEscape Artist,\u201d which won him the organization\u2019s 2010 Ethyl Eichelberger Award.<\/p>\n
The two shows couldn\u2019t have been more different. While Kelly sang alone on stage about his trauma, pain, and brush with death (alongside compelling visuals), Lee and four talented rock musicians sang about mortal issues in which they were not the direct focus. Guess whose show was more interesting?<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t Kelly\u2019s. But to be fair, Kelly\u2019s navel gazing wasn\u2019t the problem. The former Trockadero Gloxinia Ballet Company dancer sang in a style, recalling a Stephen Sondheim musical circa 1984. Worse yet, Kelly sang off key; perhaps because almost all his vocalizations occurred on the horizontal.<\/p>\n
In \u201cEscape Artist,\u201d Kelly lay on an operating-size table, telling the tale of taking a trapeze lesson, falling from a flip, and spending weeks in St. Vincent\u2019s Hospital flat on his back\u2014without pain medication. During this relived torture, Kelly drew occasional fortitude from channelling the life of Caravaggio<\/span>, who escaped pain through art making, but also died young because of it.<\/p>\n Because this show\u2019s strength rested with projections of Caravaggio\u2019s paintings (in which beauty and violence collide) and with Kelly\u2019s quirky video design (created with Jeff Morey), it\u2019s best to describe the visuals. Behind Kelly, three video screens’ content created a triptych-type feast for the eyes. The projections included Caravaggio’s paintings (i.e. \u201cJudith Beheading Holofernes”), moving montages (such as a filmed visit through a MRI machine), and live video recording (of Kelly’s face as recorded by a camera perched above the operating table). The combined technological effect produced a time traveling sensation. It called to mind Salvador Dali\u2019s \u201cPersistence of Memory,\u201d in which melting clocks make reference to the psyche\u2019s indifference to chronological events.<\/p>\n In \u201cWe\u2019re Gonna Die,\u201d Young Jean Lee\u2019s chronologically unfolding family tale moved forward with a structural elegance that felt spontaneous. Alternating between speaking to the audience and singing with the band Future Wife, Lee became a modern-day bard. Her rich, melodic voice exponentially increased as her confessional-style self-ribbing grew. She began \u201cDie\u201d describing her uncle\u2019s isolated self-loathing. She continued with love life experiences that crashed. Lee ended with her father\u2019s death; he stopped breathing hours before being given life-saving medication. All the while, Lee spoke a truth most of us dare not speak: We believe, somehow, we will be exempt from suffering and dying.<\/p>\n In the finale, Lee, three guitarists and a drummer sang, \u201cI\u2019m gonna die some day. Then I\u2019ll be gone and it will be okay\u201d. Most of the Joe\u2019s Pub’s crowd spontaneously joined their refrain. This sounds maudlin, but Lee\u2019s intimate performance style possessed the quality of a lullaby. And the audience rocked in her cradle.<\/p>\n As for the dancing, it came briefly and unceremoniously as an encore. When Benedict Kupstas raised his drumsticks in the air, the cast commenced a casual jig. Arranged into tableaus, thanks to choreographer Faye Driscoll, they resembled holiday picture postcards, which make life look sweeter than it is.<\/p>\n \u201cGonna Die\u201d will be repeated at Joe’s Pub three more times (April 29-30). It\u2019s a feel-good show, uncannily leading us to consider the inevitable: Death.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n