Ella Veres ArtVentures

This page came into being thanks to Lisa who sent me info about shows she’d like to see in NYC but couldn’t because she lived in North Carolina.

But after I wrote my first review for her, since instead of drinking my night cap, I watch a DVD, and then talk with my friends about them and brood, I decided that I'd better turn it into a give-back-to-the-community activity. And lately I've branched out in reviewing shows about town too.

So here goes my latest awfully subjective review:

 Life in a Marital Institution

July 8, 2008

Spoiler Alert

I went to see Life in a Marital Institution twice. You must, must go too. It sent me on a ten-day quest that started with queasy inquiries about placentas and ended last night with Armin Meiwes, the German guy who killed and ate a voluntary victim he had found via the internet.

Here are my thoughts on James Braly’s amazing enterprise: a few weeks ago, I turned the corner of Van Dam Street on my way to the subway stop when I saw a poster in front of SoHo Playhouse featuring a gentleman with a backdrop of blue words, Spalding Gray standing out. He was gesticulating with his hands, as if trying to stop the alarmingly large print word LIFE from squashing him. I knew that face, yes, remorse, remorse, remorse.

That was James who six years ago was telling stories about his son who wanted a pink bike and wore a pink tutu. That was James who when I sent him a starving artist who can’t pay the green card fees beg letter contributed to my rescue and, yes, it was the same James I furiously asked to be taken off mailing lists because I didn’t want to be associated with anyone who belonged to an organization that didn’t promptly support my idea to mount a widow benefit performance right after Spalding Gray’s jumping into the river and thus death.

He didn’t deserve my fury, no, he didn’t, I repented in front of the poster, and wrote him my heartfelt apologies and asked for comp tickets. Which he graciously provided.

So here I am: go see his show. This show is for those who grew up in screwed-up yet colorful families and subsequently established their own screwed-up yet colorful households. This show is for those who ponder about life and death and love and spiritual matters; this show is for Australian punks, French or German women, or those who like or dislike Australians punks, French or German women. This show talks about suburbia that comes with placentophags, that is enlightened fertility rites cannibals, and self-weaning suckling that can go to the age of six, young man get off your mom’s lap! and tandem breast-feeding, and rainbow feathered Jewish shamans. This show is for aging identical twins, one of them affording a face-lift, the other one not and it also benefits those dying of cancer overdosing on hospice morphine. It benefits everybody: literacy programs because James uses some pretty highfalutin sentence structure and long words delivered at a gun machine rattling speed, highschoolers who want to win public speech contests, college students too, presidential candidates too.

It is for dutiful husbands who manage to feed their families by writing Viagra promotional speeches like James did, or for those who quit their jobs when seeing the appalling results of his employ, like James did. It is for every co-dependent, Cinderella complex, control freak, you name it, twelve-step recovery program participant, for marriage counselors and their clients, for those who hate the White Man and want to change, come and see one tortured specimen and feel his sorrow, and hug him. Actually, I think this show should be part of Obama’s campaign. Forefront. It will bring change for sure. It changed me. It gave me hope and insight.

Well, as a new resident of New York I don’t get to see the inner workings of the American family! James, with his glad public square presentation of his private life, makes me understand and emancipate myself. For example, after the first show when I heard the story of his son’s placenta—SPOILER ALERT!—how his multiple degree stay at home tandem-suckling mom wanted to plant it under a fertility tree and since she couldn’t in Central Park, they sacrificed their urban needs and moved to the suburbs to put it to rest in their own yard, though it took them three years to do that, the placenta awaited the great moment in the freezer. I thought it awful. I went home scared—so this is what it’s like behind American condo doors, nutty people! And I asked my friends and they said I haven’t seen anything yet, suburbanites are crazy. They manicure their lawns and decorate and clean their huge mansions and that’s all they do. They don’t have vegetable gardens; don’t do a thing with all the land they occupy. It’s a tragedy, my friends said. Well, they are single friends, so I didn’t totally trust them. Especially when they vomited when I told them about suburbanites making stews out of their placentas. I was suspicious. Perhaps with more information I will change my views, like I did in the matter of hairy legs. Ten years ago, when I arrived in America I went to an artists’ party in Boston and I saw a beautiful young woman in a short green satin dress. Her legs were hairy like a spider’s. I thought she was a transvestite, but my friend explained to me she was not and that she was a feminist probably asserting her rights to be beautiful on her terms. I could not see it other than offensive. Hairy legs should be waxed, shaved, epilated, anything but exposed. Ten years and tons of books on women’s power later, I stopped shaving waxing epilating my legs and I couldn’t be happier. So perhaps I’ll eat placentas too. I went on the internet and found out that women eat their placentas because they believe their post partum depression will be alleviated since the placenta contains tons of hormones, and they also believe their bodies will heal faster. And I saw cows and goats and all mammals eating placentas on Wikipedia. I also saw various men documenting on video and detailed blogs how they cooked the placentas and had a ten-person feast. So James, sorry to discover that eating placentas is not a reason for divorce. I really sympathized with you, but Wikipedia says no. Eating placentas is the way many cultures go about it. In fact, the birthday cake is in the shape of a placenta. In my country, we have a fried dough delicacy called plăcintă and also pancake in Hungarian is called palacsinta.

The same goes for your wife breast-feeding until your son was six, and having both kids suckle at the same time. It says on the internet that breast milk is the best nutrient, with immunity and vitamins and so on. Also, if you suckle a lot, you won’t get buckteeth! I saw in a video on YouTube a British woman fed her girls until they were nine. The daughters said breast milk is better than mango, a million times better than watermelon. And again, in other cultures this is the norm. I know, I know, we are not other cultures. We are busy. We need to work to provide. Wives need to get out and work. Why did they go to Ivy League schools on scholarship? To stay home and suckle? Drive their husbands crazy? No. But see, James, wives have nutty families too that made them weird and malfunctioning. A lot of heartbreak in this world. This is a lovely show.

It is. To see a man working so hard, why, only the athletic effort of speaking non-stop for 75 minutes six times a week is staggering! And then the entire team behind this production. Imagine the costs this production entangles. Go see this show. James is willing to tell you his family’s life story to make you feel better about yours, and smiles thru it making me wonder if he is more generous than he might think. He thinks he is working on his career, God bless him, may he go on tour and play a full house at Lincoln Center soon.

Once over a beer, the only time I sat around him physically, Spalding Gray said quietly that ours is a lonely path. Beware, Ella, he said, if you decide to write about your life and the life of your close ones and put it on stage, beware of people leaving you, cursing you out. It gets lonesome.

I do write about my life. But I hide it in the drawer. I went into hiding myself. I took a what? a six-year walk into the desert.

But here is James’ poster on Vandam Street. Here is James on stage. Kindly waiting for the audience to get the joke, then laughing together. Here is James, the Sacrificial Lamb, on stage. My son left for college yesterday. He can disinherit me. I’ll get on my soapbox now. Thank you, James, the Trail Blaster.

June 26-August 31 · Wed - Sat 8:00 · Sun 3:00 & 7:00

SOHO Playhouse · 15 Vandam Street, NYC ·

(212) 691-1555

www.SohoPlayhouse.com

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