To simply label Karen Finely as one of the “NEA 4” who had to go to the Supreme Court to fight the revocation of her National Endowment for the Arts grant would be to ignore a now 40-year career. During that time she has been written and performed countless solo shows, been part of the national dialogue on politics and the arts, posed for Playboy, recorded with Sinéad O’Connor and created a show called George and Martha which depicted an affair between George W. Bush and Martha Stewart.
Beginning tonight and running through Sunday, Finley will be performing The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery at REDCAT. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Finley about that show, the state of the world and her passion for performing.
Your new show is very topical about multiple subjects including Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. You first performed it over a year ago. So much has happened since that time, does your show change to reflect all that’s happened since you first created it?
That’s such a good question. I did feel this was going to be happening. The performance is not just about Trump. The beginning is where I’m performing as a unicorn and there is a lot of symbolism with the unicorn. But it’s really about whiteness and this mythical landscape in belief and it’s very funny. It’s about liberalness and whiteness and discomfort with items that are meaningless. Like not getting the frisee lettuce at the farmer’s market. I’m really looking at the gratitude and gender disparity of Hillary Clinton and her gratefulness and thankfulness, which I just can’t stand. The gendered way of being that I think helped her lose the election.
What is the Donald Trump component of the show?
I go into the psychosexual dynamics between Hillary and Donald and how we view those. I perform as Trump, but I’m not performing him. Alec Baldwin as Trump is very polite. It’s almost like a soap opera version of a doctor on General Hospital or something. My work is much more unhinged and I expose the projection within his language so everyone knows and I go into the psychosexual language like deleted e-mails, deleted ‘male,’ unpacking language in those kind of ways. It also has a lot of humor in it as well. You aren’t going to have a moment of tears with Saturday Night Live. In my work you’ll be laughing, but you’ll be having an intensity of an understanding. It’s not just satire.
What is the state of the arts in the states today?
I think it’s a very good question. I think that people are very concerned about the arts, but they are more concerned, I think, about every day you just don’t know what’s happening in the world. You wake up and you don’t know, are we still here? I’m so happy to be at REDCAT, which is funded and supported by the community and a foundation, but I have a concern about younger artists being able to be funded and creating work. I’m very excited about work going on on the Internet where you don’t have to wait to be accepted or recognized or written about and that to me is exciting.
In a culture where 140-character tweets define political policy and reflect attention spans, what are the challenges for you in reaching people who think brevity is a sign of genius?
I find when people come to my performance they usually want to be there and they are focused and they still love the live experience. I think people are hungry for the live experience. I know I am. I love being in a room with my fellow humans, being in this cultural moment and I think people still yearn for that. You can’t get that on your phone or just Google it. I love performing and that moment in the celebration of human activity. I get nervous and my whole body I’m very anxious about it. I love that physicality that happens in my body, it means I’m alive and I’m thinking of the beauty of people coming to my show, getting dressed up, meeting people. I think my performance celebrates that because I’m not a tacit performer. We are going to be with this asshole for another three years. We might as well use our First Amendment right as long as we have it and go in the tradition of theatre and unpack what’s going on and that’s what I’m trying to do.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Carolina Restepo at La Mama Experimental Theater Club; Photo by Hunter Canning; Photo courtesy of Theo Cote at La Mama Experimental Theater Club
