Bonfire Funeral for Guild & Greyshkul, February 8, 2009

Click Here for Pictures, but beware there's lots of naked

Feedback from Audience Member, Margaret Lee

The performance begins with a presentation, during which you get more and more excited that you might finally really understand what tautological means - verbal describing visual, visual depicting movement, movement supported by drawings on the overhead screen - clumsily but charmingly, Mariah starts the unfolding or the unraveling; a sequence beginning with a little bit of physics, a touch of neuroscience which starts moving towards the softer sciences, inching towards all out emotional nudity. Maybe good, maybe bad, an intervention occurs, disrupting that train of thought, which feels aggressive but you understand it's staged - a man berates Mariah for her self indulgence, chastising her for subjecting us to all that we just heard and wagging his finger - "don't keep encouraging her." She seems ok with it all, so you feel ok and you sense that something is going to shift after this intermission, if you can call it that. A giant shell costume is donned and Mac the Knife is sung a cappella, slow and steady, by Mariah who doesn't seem phased at all, she seems even more at ease as she tap dances gingerly. Somehow, seamlessly, she disappears as two young woman have a tap off to a live drummer, street style - remember that guy Savion Glover - like THAT! - which mysteriously creates the space for a stream of naked men in animals masks to run around the crowd, there are whistles blowing and drums drumming, brightly colored fake animal hair streaming. And then it's over and you smile and feel sort of soft inside.