Alexandra Tatarsky responds to the Trump presidency with absurd
monologues, touching ballads, and laughter yoga in her bold solo show.
Do you feel angry, devastated, or scared after the 2016
presidential election? Maybe you should consider the
Laughter-Tears-Vomit-Scream exercise brought to us by Laughter Yoga. This and
other ways to cope with reality are demonstrated by Alexandra Tatarsky in her
solo show Americana Psychobabble, which ran at The Brick as a part
of This is Not Normal, an arts and activism festival.
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| Alexandra Tatarsky in Americana Psychobabble. Photo by Lydia Kincaid. |
When the political life of the country looks like an absurd
circus, it is only appropriate for the clown to speak up. Tatarsky bravely
assumes the responsibility for voicing global anxiety. From the very beginning
she radiates a great amount of explosive energy, visible through the twists and
twitches of her athletic body and rapidly changing raw emotions. Seductive,
melodramatic, enraged, scared, and inspiring, Tatarsky switches emotional gears
in a heartbeat.
When Tatarsky opens her mouth, words come out. But for the most
part it’s just a stream of consciousness similar to Russian futurist “zaum”
poetry. It sounds something like this: “Fuck the facts. We are so post-fact. De
facto. That we are all fucked.” Talking in this manner, Tatarsky “reflects” on
topical American issues: patriotism, money, guns, immigrants, and God. Think
crazy preacher on the subway, or “village idiot” of the Lower East Side.
Strangely, this manner of speech feels suitable for modern day
America. Words put together by the principle of audible similarity and infused
by emotional delivery and expressive body language suddenly become a convincing
monologue. When Tatarsky climbs up on an upside-down soybean oil container to
deliver an inspiring patriotic speech, it is not merely a satire on Trump’s
America. It is also a cry for help, a weep of a confused creature tangled in
words and emotions.
Tatarsky's star-spangled outfit, red stilettos, ragged blond
wig, and heavy, smeared makeup of “a patriotic lady coming home from Fourth of
July festivities” are tossed away for the second part of the show. A brief
interactive session of Laughter Yoga is followed by pouring ketchup on her
finger and pretending it’s a hot dog. The Angel of Death—in platform sneakers,
tangled black wig and a bundle of ferry wings dangling behind her back—takes
the stage with a touching ballad accompanied on acoustic guitar.
Heartfelt songs with lines like “Daddy will make you feel great
again” and “Music is made for being sad and making sadness loud,” feel very
much on point. The more sentimental second part of the show abandons the “zaum”
manner of speech and serves as a counterweight to the absurdist poetic
beginning. To free herself from all the masks that a clown wears, Tatarsky
performs a cleansing ritual of washing off ketchup from plastic bags and then
bathing her face in the ketchup dyed water. And as Tatarsky strips out of her
clothes when changing characters, she leaves the stuff on the floor like a
snake discarding her skin.
In Americana Psychobabble,
Tatarsky is the jester, the villain, the imprisoned princess, and the knight on
a rescue mission. Frightening and frightened, she somehow embodies both ends of
the political spectrum making us understand a simple thing: there is no “us”
and “them.”
__________
Americana Psychobabble played at The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn,
through June 29, 2017. The running time is 60 minutes with no intermission.
Tickets were $20. For more
information visit bricktheater.com.
Americana Psychobabble is created and performed by Alexandra Tatarsky. It
is co-directed by Meryl Sands. Lighting Design is by Sarah Murphy.
[This review
was published on theasy.com on 7.10.17]
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