Performa 07 launched last nigth with a one night only performance of Francesco Vezzoli's adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's 1917 play 'Right you are if you think you are' at the solomon guggenheim museum. It was vezzoli's first ever live performance and it launched amid long waits in long queues, restless uber arty new york types, VIP bodyguards and celebrity air kissing. so mary and I were truly dunked head first into Performance art-AMERICAN STYLE-which involves queue anxiety, and lots of loud and oblivious queue pushing-in: shameless!. (…well, it would be rude not to join in wouldnt it? after all, if mary and i hadnt boldly pushed right to the front we would have never actually caught the performance because it began as a huge part of the audience were still standing outside in the rain!. I rationalise this new found streak of anti social behaviour by saying that we are writers; it is our duty to be at the front and get good seats to record the performance. We are merely serving generations of performance art lovers and future historians who could not be there themselves).
In typically holllywood fashion the bill of actors for this one night performance included a starr studded line up :cate blanchett, abigail breslin, ellen burstyn, anita ekberg, marcus carl franklin, natalie portman, peter sarsgaard, david strathairn, elaine stritch and dianne wiest. All these A-listers had turned out (with body guards) to do justice to Vezzoli's vision of Pirandello's play, whicxh was originally conceived as a tale of the impossibility of objective truth centred around the central (mostly absent) character of 'Signora Ponzo', which Vezzoli has turned into a parable of the modern day cult of celebrity, together with one off galliano and prada designed outfits and Cate Blanchett playing Signora Ponzo,
Having faught off the olsen twins, marina abramovic and various other recognisably famous people in the audience to get to the front of the queue, mary, rebecca and i get past the gallery door-police and are seated in a small ampitheatre full of video screens. And we are totally miffed: the video screens are a live feed into the 'real' action in the performance space located at the other side of the guggenheim. We, the three 'Writing Live Fellows' are relegated to second place, we have cheap seats! You understand, readers, we are not ego maniacs, but still; the cheek of it! We sit down and plot our venemous blogging revenge amid thoughts of abandoning the whole thing and retiring to a bar (apart from mary -it must be said-who was very gracious about the situation, if not a little stunned with jet lag). rebecca then took the guggenheim bull by the horns and asked staff what was going on. she came back with the low down on what was to happen in the performance; it seems cate blanchett , no less, would be joining us on stage during the screening! The space Cate, and we her audience, share turns out to be central to the performance itself, ie live. We are not in the cheap seats, second class lounge, or third hand video space -removed from the action-afterall! (joy). something 'is' going to happen in our space, something live, something expensive, something famous…We are important to the peice, moreover, we are going to be in the presence of a real life celebrity!.
It is an entirely fitting tribute to Vezzoli's rumination on celebrities and celebrity culture, and i think perhaps (cynically on my part-perhaps on Vezzol'is too) the overall point of the peice, that our being in cate's presence and therefore witness to a 'live' (celebrity) performance changed mary, rebecca and i's mind about staying for the duration of the peice… youll need to read my reveiw to find out more about the work itself, but needless to say, performance art in Performa has kicked off with a bang in true american blockbuster, expensive looking, coture gowned, celebrity dripped style!!
RLxx
