BAUBO PERFORMANCE PROJECT FESTIVAL OF NEW WORK
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I love this story. First, it reminds me that comedy is the child of sorrow and loss. Second, there is nothing more mysterious, and hence nothing funnier, than our own bodies. And third, the end of the story runs counter to all my cultural expectations about the proper time to mention the vulva–either not at all, or in a strictly sexual, if not pornographic, context. Just reading it before the show shook me a bit out of my dogmatic slumber.
But sadly, the women who make up the Baubo Performance Project never quite live up to the honest, radical, Karen Finley-esque power of Baubo’s story. In fact, their pieces are remarkably reserved, even chaste. Nothing here even approaches the moment in another current all-female show, Sweat Dreams, when Pamela Webster openly jokes about the way her raging hormones during pregnancy enlarged her clitoris so much her little boy asked her about her “penis.” She adds that no one told her that when she lactated, her milk would flow like the Mississippi at the merest thought of her baby or even at the sound of another baby crying.
Still, there are moments of unmistakable originality. Particularly wonderful is the way Baubo mixes the comic and the sublime without cheapening either, especially in Jill Miller’s four performance blackouts: “Jane’s in a Rage: A Demon-Child Breaking,” “Jane Part 2: Wirerimglassesgirl,” “Jane Epilogue: Hag Rap(e),” and “Jane Part 4: Ramrod.” Each piece explores such serious topics as anger, envy, and what is and is not performance, yet contains just enough comedy to ground the material and keep it from becoming pretentious. Similarly, Marianne Kim’s marvelous movement piece, “None But a Pretty Smile,” features both lots of mysterious and beautiful movement and a parody rap song with the refrain “I want a bald boyfriend.”
