Milk pools, beer guzzling, tomato throwing, blood curdling screams

The 10.24.08 performance of Kathleen, Alyssa, Maegan, and Lauren: Its was interesting seeing four different performances come together like that. I feel like some overshadowed others - Lauren and Maegan were absolutely captivating both in their own right. Kathleen was mostly on her own. She was in her square as a character with a problem, existing in her own character's mind and space. Her text and the idea behind it was fairly straight forward not leaving too much room for alternative interpretation. She was prepared and had a clear objective for what she wanted to portray. I felt her nervousness a little, which happens when you go first and everyone watches you for five minutes. I was happy she didn't rush into it, remained calm, didn't parody, and let the audience soak in what she felt her pace was. I believe Maegan came in next. She has a very interesting energy to her on stage - very centered, focused, projecting the inner emotion of the idea she wishes to present. On this day Maegan seemed turmoiled, in deep thought. She was silent at first, interacting with the audience through her eyes and a single picture. Her performance was happening with or without an audience present. She seemed to be putting herself in her own private hell right before our eyes - every woman's nightmare... to be tied up, duck taped, shoved in a small space left to fend for yourself. And yet she ended up freeing herself eventually, not entirely but she did break some of the ducktape. There was struggle, fear - terror, lonliness, inner strength. Maegans screaming cut through the room with such a heavy strike it became upsetting to hear. Not in the way that it was annoying or anything, but in the sense that you wanted to help her - that it was hard to tolerate hearing such distress. Alyssa came in next and I'm still not sure what I think about her fifteen minutes. When she had such powerful imagery going on around her, the performance was kind of lost. She danced and sang in the same spot for a while, wearing a throwback 80's velvet black dress... the kind that would have been highly desired back in the day. She sang and danced to a Paula Abdul song that I kind of grew up with - Straight Up Now Tell Me. It was reminiscent of an earlier time, but one in which she would have been very very young, not old enough for a prom or homecoming. The tomatoes were placed in a plastic grocery bag, left on the floor. She didn't address them right away, just left them in the bag until she left it was time to use them. Then this sort of breaking of the fourth wall happened and she antagonized the audience for a while. We all took a tomato. This is where her audience got very confused. We didn't know why the tomatoes were there or what purpose they served in relation to her dancing, her song, her dress. A couple audience members ended up throwing the tomatoes back at her which is what I think she wanted. Also Alyssa started coughing, like a deeply sick cough, almost as to show her character was sick or weak or something else was going on - that the song and dance was a cover up to a not so pretty life. But then, again, why the tomatoes? Lauren's performance was, I thought, pretty damn interesting. Milk in and of itself is a great visual. Her steely reserve during the whole performance was intimidating. She wanted to bathe in a fucking pool of milk and thats what she did. The glasses on the floor acted almost as an offering to the audience, but then filled with milk coming off her own body - it was deeply personal. That kind of imagery, milk being offered to you with freshly baked food (sustainance) but the milk is literally poored off her body - she transports it, tries her best to fill your cup with milk - which is a delicacy in many places of the world, she gives to you over and over. It was intimate - so much so that many people were offended by the act of offering something that had touched someone else's body. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I could have downed any milk myself - but its just the thought behind it - what you take away from it, how others react. Also the milk was not milk anymore the second she stepped into it - nay - the second you saw it was in the kiddie pool. That pool looked like a baptismal.