Avant-garde reading, with popcorn
“People want a playful outlet,” said Michelle Tea, author of cult favorite memoirs “Valencia” and “Rent Girl” and most recently “Modern Tarot.” As a founding member of the long-running Sister Spit poetry and performance tour, she has curated literary happenings since 1994. All that was on display at Tea’s event named “Experiment I” (with no second installment currently planned, the name could be read as ironic, hopeful or both) at the newly opened Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles on Sept. 29.
It included unabashed nudity, dance, performance art, wigs, oneliners, a keyboard, skateboards, popcorn, dental floss, video loops, audience participation and even, quite frankly, unfettered joy — rarities at public literary events.
The night included Tara Jepson, author of “Like a Dog” and Miriam Klein Stahl, illustrator of “Rad Women Worldwide,” both published by Sister Spit/City Lights; comedian Lizzy Cooperman; writer Wendy Ortiz (“Bruja”) and the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, performing a partiallyunclad piece called “Chronic: A Dance About Marijuana.”
“Hold on to your hats and whatever other accessories you happen to be wearing,” Tea told the audience as the performance began. Purnell (author of the novel “Since I Laid My Burden Down” from Feminist Press) and two other dancers began in witchy black wigs like the three weird sisters and, making use of ICA L.A.’s three connected rooms, beckoned the crowd to follow them around corners and back again.
The sound of popcorn kernels raining from the dancers’ hands onto poured concrete was as dramatic as a broken string of pearls, and later, when the dancers bathed themselves in a popped batch, the smell of buttery popcorn drove the message home: in “a dance about marijuana,” this was the munchies portion. (A loop of Ice Cube and Chris Tucker in “Friday” playing behind them was an inspired touch.) Post-popcorn, the dancers unspooled a web of dental floss from their mouths, a giant cat’s cradle that connected them to one another, stretching farther and farther like the string of a kite. The performance was thrilling and intentionally scented here too. Mint floss — evoking green, like marijuana, Purnell later explained, “was a stylistic choice.”
If that focused on visuals and scent, comedian Cooperman used a surprising sound — a keyboard with ominous organ notes — to punctuate her jokes. The discordance between her dire score and the audience’s laughter was funny in and of itself. Cooperman clearly knew her audience, delivering jokes in a theatrical old crone voice, playing truth or dare with the crowd and giving the audience — comfortable with gender fluidity — the opportunity to laugh at ourselves. “I just want to explore the boundaries!” she screamed, “’Cause I’m so sex positive!” At times, laughter nearly drowned out her keyboard. No drink minimum necessary, Cooperman killed.
Ortiz, whose latest book is a memoir of her dreams, asked the audience to raise their hands when the iconography in her reading coincided with their own. Dreams of cats, seals, sharks and even matricide all had multiple takers; befitting of current events, bombs were perhaps the most commonly shared dream. “I’m a psychotherapist, so I use the word ‘experiment’ a lot,” she said of her efforts to incorporate the evening’s theme in a reading. “If it fails, it’s still good. I love the word ‘experiment.’ ”
In the last reading of the evening, Jensen and her team from Pave the Way Skateboards, which makes skateboard decks, read their queer skateboarding manifesto. “Are we not punks? Do we not value energy over Juilliard training?” asked Jensen, who skated across the museum floor in heels and tights. “As queer skateboarders we believe … that part of dismantling toxic hierarchies and undermining patriarchy is creating an even playing field for all skill sets and abilities, and learning to value the energy, or ‘stoke,’ a person brings to their skateboarding.” They held up handmade signs for an Instagram photo-op.
As the crowd filed out, Tea swept up leftover popcorn, like confetti after a party, with a push broom. “I like to be surprised and entertained,” she said. “I like to challenge myself and challenge my writer friends to do something different.”