JAIL OF GENDER
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Kathe Burkhart’s poetry, prose, and visual art deal primarily with being an artist and a woman in an age author Susan Faludi has characterized as a “backlash,” where victories are dearly bought from a patriarchal society that claims enlightenment even while cosmetic surgery rises and rape abounds. Most of the usual issues are addressed: pregnancy, abuse, love, work, self-image. Burkhart’s poetry is straightforward but lyrical, and her prose verges on pragmatic. Her visual work looks like pop art with a message; for her “Liz Taylor Series” she has appropriated photographic stills from Taylor’s movies, enlarged and painted over them, and emblazoned across them epigrams such as “Piss on It” (over Taylor in the surf in Suddenly Last Summer) or “Cunt Teaser” (over Taylor kneeling before a lackadaisical James Dean).
The Chrysalis Project has now adapted some of Burkhart’s work for the stage (supplemented with additional writing by Laura Gannon, Joy Golish, Diane M. Honeyman, and RoiAnn Phillips) in what they describe as a “mixed-media performance . . . filled with music, slides, humor, pathos, anger, and ultimately triumph.” In the mixed-media department, the production fails utterly. Slides (some of them fuzzy) of Burkhart’s work are projected on a single small screen, apparently with very little thought about integrating them into the piece; and the slides, of course, lack the impact of the actual pieces themselves. Music consists mostly of K.D. Lang (a too-obvious choice) played during blackouts over Cafe Voltaire’s staticky sound system.
