Burlesque Sketch
Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School
By Joel McCarthy
In a theatrically-lit back room a burlesque bombshell in translucent platforms and satin corset drapes herself over a long scarlet-shrouded table. She's a sort of macabre melodrama poured into skimpy crimson gaud posing seductively before a tightly-packed crescent of scribblers. Though this vintaged scene recalls nostalgic tableaus of Parisian bohemia, it's simply another Saturday for Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School at The Lucky Cat cafe (245 Grand St.) in Williamsburg.
Burlesque, the humorous, sexually charged style of performance originating in the late 1800s was more than simple striptease. It was a bawdy blending of exotic acts ranging from fire eating to fan dancing, vaudevillian skits, and, of course, the stylized removal of apparel.
Jo Weldon (A.K.A. Jo Boobs) started her colorful, circuitous career as a high schooler in the '80s performing poetry and striptease before viewings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Five years ago, she created the New York School of Burlesque, operating out of the Slipper Room in the Lower East Side. A veteran of many erotic arts, she makes the distinction from stripping thusly: "Burlesque plays to the house, stripping plays to individual dollars." Although Jo has been part of the New York scene for over ten years, she claims no responsibility for what she sees as a mysterious and orgiastic explosion of interest: "Now there's a show somewhere pretty much every night and that definitely wasn't the case just one year ago." Molly Crabapple, indefatigable pioneer and host of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School agrees: "When we started [Dr. Sketchy's] three years ago, I knew the names of all the girls in the city. Now there are literally hundreds." Molly keeps a seven-month waiting list to model for a Sketchy's session.
Contemporary performances tend (superficially, at least) toward the pin-up girl styles of the early 20th century, but are frequently defined by their darker undertones. Farcical costumes like 'voluptuous clown' or 'sexy Hunter S. Thompson' mingle with cadaver-toned girls in prison-grey striped stockings and pasties, the result being a schizoid blend of brash immodesty and comic melancholy, like a dead-baby joke whispered by a lewd bartender or the giggle of a leather-and-studs dominatrix. One sometimes feels as if one's watching a deceased burlesque star resurrected for the purposes of Tim Burton.
On this session of Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School, leggy Aprella has chosen a theme of 'broken hearts' in honor of Valentine's Day. An edge of bra peeks from under her cinched tight corset and her white powdered face is smeared with Betty Boop lipstick. Red fishnets, garters, elbow length gloves, and a ghastly chest wound purportedly associated with a sordid bout of cardio-cleptia complete the harlequin ensemble. Under a yellowed glass chandelier she slides fluidly between poses to the maudlin sounds of 1920s jazz. The pint-sized, speed-talking Molly Crabapple jumps on stage, a blood-red blur in a satin dress, to address the crowd: "All right, art monkeys, listen up!" she introduces a contest involving drawing with one's less favored hand, "...whoever wins gets this big box of chocolates which will make you fat so that no one will ever love you!" And the crowd cheers.
For more information check out www.drsketchy.com.
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Notes on Notes From Underground
The Brick Theatre’s recent production and the Dostoevsky novella upon which it’s based.
By Adam Klasfeld
Illustration by Ilya Padalka
An usher leads ticket holders up a staircase that leads backstage. They descend into a cramped space and squeeze into whatever seats are available around the center. The lights black out. Someone lights a candle, revealing a poor and buffoonish man wearing pants torn at the buttocks. He is the “Underground Man,” the object of ridicule in the theater’s adaptation of Notes From Underground.
In Dostoevsky’s novella, he’s just as wretched, but the book seduces the reader into sympathizing with him. It’s structured as the diaries of a self- and world-loathing civil servant alienated by 19th century Russian life. He rationalizes his own failures as a product of trying to be honest in a corrupt world.
While theater cannot portray a character’s every thought or philosophical argument, it shows how people act in the name of their beliefs. Michael Gardner’s adaptation leaves no doubt how the playwright feels about the “Underground Man” or his opinions. The character depicted onstage is not a misunderstood philosopher and social critic, but a petty, alcoholic, and weak man who craves the acceptance of the society that he condemns.
Played by actor Robert Honeywell, the character doesn’t walk; he clunks around like a wounded moose. He doesn’t speak. He shouts; he whines, and he rants from the back of his throat, where the words mix with the products of his digestive tract. In fact, the first words he speaks to the audience are complaints about his liver pains. He’s not only a physically amusing clown, but also alienated from any sense of purpose in life.
In Dostoevsky’s novels and Beckett’s plays, this frustration makes man’s efforts to create his own meaning noble and doomed. Absurdist writers presented characters struggling for meaning to show how difficult and amusing humanity’s search can be. This play depicts a similar figure and asks, “Isn’t he ridiculous, and isn’t it easy for someone to fall into his emotional, philosophical, and spiritual sinkhole?”
Four other actors play a chorus of people in his life, and they are portrayed either as hypocrites, bullies, or remote objects of his fantasy. Since there’s not much realistic dialogue in the script, it’s difficult to tell whose perspective we are getting. Are the voices mocking the “Underground Man” being as hostile to him as it appears, or is the audience hearing their taunts as the character remembers them? For that matter, is the man even exaggerating his own depravity?
The claustrophobic backstage area mirrors the narrowness of his own mind, which has been suffocating him and everyone he comes across. Directors Michael Gardner and Gyda Arber challenge the audience’s comfort zones. The lighting design is only a candle. When a character blows it out between scenes, the audience sits in darkness, listening to eerily recorded voices. We can’t stretch our legs without interfering with the playing space. It’s unfortunate that only companies far off Broadway can experiment with such inventive staging today.
However, some of the broad direction can be alienating. When the main character solicits a teenaged prostitute named Liza, he starts yelling at her without provocation. In the book, he genuinely cares for her and wants her to leave the brothel. He only becomes cruel later to guard himself when she sees him vulnerable, living in squalor. Even then, she pities him rather than taking offense. Such moments of tenderness and irony of the novel get lost amidst the slapstick of the play.
But often the humor makes up for it. One of the strongest scenes presents the “Underground Man” in his fantasy life, where he becomes acclaimed for a short story that exposes his hypocritical peers. In one of the funniest scenes, a young woman impressed with his writing brags about how he deflowered her while reciting Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
The Brick marketed this adaptation as “a disgusting play,” but for all of its profanity, it is actually more hopeful than the book. Dostoevsky’s anti-hero damns everyone to the end, believing that anyone who disagrees with him is deluded. Michael Gardner’s adaptation gives the unhappy character another option. The actors that have spent the length of the play offending him try to calm him down, and they open the door to offer him a way out of his narrowness. As it ends, he considers whether or not to leave.
www.bricktheater.com
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Handy Warhol
The Crest Hardware Art Show
What do you get when you mix a nearly half century old family owned business with an ever-changing vibrant artist community? The Crest Hardware Art Show!
The original Crest Art Show dates back to 1990 and in only its first year, helped get Crest True Value Hardware named the Top-Rated Hardware Store in NYC by The Daily News.
After a little hiatus, the next generation of Crest Hardware decided to bring this unique experience back to the Brooklyn community.
The art pieces are placed alongside hardware products which adds to the element of surprise and lends an aura of the unexpected. Manuel Franquinha, the now 80 year-old owner says, "Sometimes people aren't sure if a piece is art or hardware. The only way you can tell for sure is by the price. Hardware is a lot cheaper."
The Art Show runs until July 11, so be sure to check it out, or, if you need a new plunger, head on over to Crest, the hardware store that has "art and soul."
CREST HARDWARE ART SHOW
Curated by Manager, Joseph Franquinha
Until Friday, July 11
558 Metropolitan Avenue
Phone: 718.388.9521
www.CrestHardwareArtShow.com
M11X, Eames Hot Rod Boombox
(speaker wires, electrical wires)
Tom Bogaert, Plaine au Mille Souris
(black licorice rats, matte black spray paint)
Hunky Dory, Disco Knot Ball
(electrical wire, bulbs)
Michael Marra, Black Wire
(black extension cord)
Dana Schulman, Hard Ready-to-wear
(washers, and galvanized wire)
Shannon Tamsin, Blinking Bliss
(construction safety lights and welded metal)
Dana Parlier, Upside Down Headstand Man on Spring
(welded and hammered metals, spring)
Sara McLaughlin, Hammered, Nailed, Screwed
(paint)
Zeev Neumann, SITTING NAILS THE CASE OF THE MISSING H
(plaster, toilet seat, concrete nails)
Thea Grant & Nico Bazzini, Triptych: Ware Me
(picture hanging hooks)
Wendy Klemperer, Chained Hound
(re-bar, plaster)
Michael Stalios, Generating Hardware
(paint, owner and manager)
