THAT Holly Hughes

"NEA 4 in Residence" + "Performing Beyond Funding" @NewMuseum

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 11:35:00 -0400

from travis chamberlain: “I am very pleased to introduce the resident artists for “Performing Beyond Funding Limits: Research in Practice,” a companion project to “NEA 4 in Residence.” The PBFL residents are Tobaron Waxman, Salley May, Brigham Mosley, and Erin Markey. These artists will engage in a series of self-directed group research sessions under the collaborative mentorship of the NEA 4, et al. to develop radical “business plans” for better sustaining their own solo performance practices and to imagine new strategies beyond the limits of available funding. A series of Final Presentations on Saturday, May 5 (FREE) is preceded by a shared bill of new short performance works by these artists on Friday, May 4 at 7pm.

The PBFL residents were chosen by the NEA 4 in collaboration four curators (selected by the NEA 4) who supported their work during the culture wars of the early ’90s. To follow this project and participate in the research, please join our community page at NEA 4 in Residence - New Museum.”

HOLLY HUGHES IN RESIDENCE: DISCIPLINE AND LEGACY IN QUEER PERFORMANCE

Holly Hughes quarries queer strategies for teaching queer performance and performing queer histories.

May 5 – Queer(ing) Performance Pedagogy: Roundtable with Holly Hughes

May 10 – Expanded forms of Reenactment in Queer Performance: Holly Hughes and Cindy Carr in Conversation

Go Wolverines!

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:03:07 -0400

I have alot of inner animals but b ball brings out the WOLVERINE. It’s nuts how excited I was about the game last night. I seriously considered face paint as an option. My inner wolverine is unleashed. I will return to being a normal human being in a day or two.

Louisville was great. And we lost.

Paul Robeson

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 15:57:27 -0400

Happy birthday, Paul Robeson, a courageous American hero.

Animal Acts, Beasts of the Northern Wild

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 16:26:44 -0400

Tonight I’m performing in Ann Arbor for the first time in many many years - 6:30 at the Dude, as part of Animal Acts, Beasts of the Northern Wild… I’ll be sharing the stage with Kim Marra, Carmelita Tropicana and Joseph Keckler.

I’m opening. I’m not an idiot, no way I could follow that lineup!!!!

Hosted by the amazing Amanda Krugliak!

at the Duderstadt Cente!

2281 Bonisteel Boulevard Ann Arbor, Michigan

I should just point out we SOLD OUT last night, not that it costs anything but we ran out of seating, even with the Film festival, Ken Burns, the Motorola Lecture, etc etc We have people from Ohio State, from Bowling Green, from MSU, and Indiana and the CUNY Grad center who came in for the festival! So come early, parking is tricky on North!

Complete schedule: http://art-design.umich.edu/news/beasts_of_the_northern_wild_performing_species_today/

Dog & Pony, coming to Oberlin! @oberlincollege Weds, Feb...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:00:42 -0500

Dog & Pony, coming to Oberlin! @oberlincollege

Weds, Feb 13,

7:30pm Warner Main Space. Bring your own pony…

Private versus public

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:54:10 -0500

Dear Cyber Public

A post I had intended for a private internet forum was reposted here yesterday. I forget that I have this more public platform that anyone can see. My friend who reposted the entry was just trying to provide a forum for how to teaching provocative material, but of course, some of my students saw this piece and were quite upset.

The original post was put into cyberspace in part to ask for help from other teachers who teach controversial material. I didn’t feel like I handled the situation in class very well because I had gotten upset, I felt that I didn’t help the student gain a deeper understanding of the issue, I had shut them down.

In the other venue, a place that I police carefully to make sure that my students are never part of, I got lots of help about how to do a better job. But things have been made much worse by this inadvertant (and misspelled) reposting.

I hope that all accept my apologies for a series of errors. This is isn’t a forum I wish to use to talk about work issues of any complexity. I love my students - that is not too large a claim - and hope that trust can be repaired.

Congrats C Carr

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 07:41:14 -0500

Congratulations to dear friend, Cynthia Carr, for getting a big mention in the NY Times - her latest “Fire In the Belly,” a biography of David Wojnarowicz, was listed as one of the top art books of the past year! It’s beautifully written, as all of Carr’s work is, and very compelling. So great to see someone who is such a brilliant writer, wonderful human but utterly unself-promoting, get some long overdue attention!

Maybe someone can lure me across the bridge with a cheeseburger?

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 22:23:00 -0500

Lilo, my younger, though not young dog, is prone to doggie stage fright, i.e, ‘ring nerves.’ Like mother, like daughter. and for months, her bete noire has been the weave poles.

As someone who suffers panic attacks, I can completely sympathize. I have terrible anxiety driving across bridges, for one. Like Lilo, when we approach the trigger of our anxiety, we slow down. We get slower and slower, even though this prolongs our engagement with the source of our anxiety, but it’s not something I talk myself out of. Of course, if you are creeping along a bridge at 20 miles an hour, inside of 50 or even 70, you are in danger. I’ve had to be rescued off of bridges. Anti anxiety meds help, but it doesn’t go away.

So I am so proud of my little doggie and the work we have been doing. She has no problem with the weaves in practice, she dives in. I’ve tried different ways to make it more stressful, to simulate the trial situation, but nothing is quite like a trial. If she refuses the weaves, as she did once, but only once, this weekend, I pick her up, and quietly put her back in her crate. No jackpot. After doing this once, this weekend, she got faster and faster with each attempt. The last one was 20 seconds under standard course time. And of course, there was a big juicy terrier size cheeseburger and pepsi (without the pepsi) afterwards

Maybe someone can lure me across the bridge with a cheeseburger? Or a gift certificate for a pair of fluevogs?

Call me cranky, but...

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 08:00:58 -0400

So I just completed the most annoying, uninformative and unhelpful survey on sustainability imaginable.

I consider climate change one of the biggest challenges our planet faces but this was an idiotic survey designed by the type of environmentalists that make me want to buy the biggest truck, fill it with cheeseburgers and drive it across the country with the windows open and the AC raging.

If environmental concerns are ever going to be embraced by the country - if - a big if - they have to be expressed in ways that consider all the intersectional analysis of the past thirty years -

One question was about how often I bug my friends to bike or walk to work, buy a hybrid, get a more efficient appliance, attend an event called “Recycle Mania.”

And the answer is I have too few friends to further alienate them. And I have friends who have no money. I have disabled friends.

And Ann Arbor is full of self righteous people who are always offering unsolicited advice so someone else will do this.

I can just be the lesbian crank on the corner.

Horse Race Pt 2

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 07:58:37 -0400

I’m an undecided voter. Do I vote for guy who calls his opponent a bullshiter, or do I vote for guy who thinks 47 percent of the country are losers? It’s really tough…name calling or writing off half the country? What about rape, am I pro or con? Hmmm.

The Horse Race

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 07:55:39 -0400

Tammy Duckworth has a ten point lead over Joe “you lie” Walsh.

I think Walsh’s interruption of the State of the Union speech was one of those awful scary moments where you can see the violence, the hatred erupt and take the country down.

Hoping Mr You Lie becomes Mr You Lose…

Solo performance, and solo performance class. Thank you...

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:19:42 -0400

Solo performance, and solo performance class. Thank you Willamette!

Pony care. A set.

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:15:10 -0400

Pony care. A set.

For all you pony-loving artistes…

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 16:10:47 -0400

For all you pony-loving artistes…

R.I.P.

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 12:53:25 -0400

Sad to hear of Senator McGovern’s passing. He was such an unapologetic liberal. Running against a chronic liar and war criminal. (Of course in most domestic policies Nixon 1972 would be to the left of most of the Democrats. But still - a liar, bigot, and war criminal.)
Thank you Senator for your fearless commitment to peace and social justice.

I’m here at Willamette University in Oregon, courtesy of a woman I first met as an undergrad...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:12:14 -0400

I’m here at Willamette University in Oregon, courtesy of a woman I first met as an undergrad at an all women’s college.
She brought me to school against the will of the gender and women’s studies’ department, the theatre department.
She says I yelled at those departments, which I feel ashamed of, I don’t remember and she’s probably right.
She remembers that the people were tenured and I told them that it wasn’t about bringing me so much as it was supporting a young woman who had shown so much initiative. All said they supported my visit in principle but it could lead to a backlash. Well, I think they were the backlash.
But this woman, now on the cusp of getting tenure, said it was good - I asked the professors what tenure was good for, beyond job security which is not to be sneezed at.
Its a question to ask myself as a Professor, to what uses do I put that privilege?
I know its limits. In my time at Michigan, two women were denied promotion. The only two to be denied. Both feminists. Both in performance. I was unable to reverse it and not a day goes by I don’t think about that.

Maybe a question for us. What power we might have, even if we are powerless in some areas. And how might we use it.

WJRT

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:52:00 -0400

Way to go WJRT, tv station of my youth. A reporter in Flint challenges Ryan to talk about the poverty that has engulfed Flint (along with Saginaw and Detroit), and all he gets is teaching the poor to be more moral in their decision making

. That’s it. You’re poor because you are immoral, I might say allowing poverty to grow is immoral… but… when the reporter wants to know about the gun violence and gun controls, Ryan ends the conversation.

Oral arguments in the SCOTUS on affirmative action in Texas.

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:48:21 -0400

Thanks, Joshua Chambers-Letson for this quote:

“It is because of the legacy of unequal treatment that we now must permit the institutions of this society to give consideration to race in making decisions about who will hold the positions of influence, affluence, and prestige in America. For far too long, the doors to those positions have been shut to [ people of color]. If we are ever to become a fully integrated society, one in which the color of a person’s skin will not determine the opportunities available to him or her, we must be willing to take steps to open those doors. I do not believe that anyone can truly look into America’s past and still find that a remedy for the effects of that past is impermissible.” Justice Thurgood Marshall, partial concurrence/partial dissent in Regents v. Bakke.

Andrew Sullivan should go back to being a queer republican and take his love of gay marriage and...

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 08:05:32 -0400

Andrew Sullivan should go back to being a queer republican and take his love of gay marriage and simpson-bowles deficit reduction with him. Simpson bowles is a terrible idea that would gut all the social safety nets and send us into a full on depression. Yes, I know Obama set up this terrible thing but at least he didn’t implement it.

It’s sort of like being on the diversity committee at my place of employment; you come up with a set of proposals, it looks like you are doing something about something, but really, you’re not.

To be clear, I’m pro-diversity, anti-simpson bowles or maybe bowels, as I just typed.

But it’s the same administrative sleight of hand - here’s a problem that we can’t or won’t solve, but we have to look like we’re addressing… let’s have a committee! A report! Recommendations!

My other point, Andrew Sullivan, it pains me to think of you as gay and in my book, despite your crush on Obama, you’re still right wing. I hope he ignores whatever you say about anything, anytime. You are a bad influence.

I take the demise of the white protestant majority, the people from whom i'm descended, to be a small ray of hope.

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 12:02:04 -0400

For the first time, white protestants aren’t the majority in America. And twenty percent of Americans are either of no religious belief or agnostic/atheist. I was gonna say, I have nothing against religious belief but that’s not true. I had a religious education, a couple of them but who’s counting, and know people of faith who are open minded, tolerant folks. That does not seem to be the majority of religious people in this country. In my experience. Religion is just too often a cover for all sorts of bigotry and ignorance; it’s too often a mask covering anti-democratic political beliefs that are getting imposed on others in the name of “religious” expression. Again, I know that is not always the case. And I know from my own experience of the solace faith offers. Nevertheless, I take the demise of the white protestant majority, the people from whom iIm descended, to be a small ray of hope.