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What are you working on right now?​

I’m in a production at Yale Rep that Robert Woodruff is directing, it’s based on a Fassbender film.​

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​It must be so freeing to be unattached to any specific medium, given your training in
so many different areas. Do you ever find yourself getting stuck or obsessing over a
particular medium?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

No, [laughs] no in a way performance for me includes all of those, you know, aspects of the

work. I do move around in between the different aspects. The biggest adjustment is going
between performance and visual art. I have a sporadic visual art practice. It’s really a
much quieter medium. And the other thing is that in this culture, if you do more than one
thing, either you’re suspect or you’re considered a dilettante. It’s a culture of specialists,
you know what I mean?



​​Absolutel​y.​​​

I’ve had a pretty varied career, or careers, but for me it’s all connected. At this point
one of my biggest goals is to connect the dots and really articulate how all the different
aspects interplay. That’s going to be the thing that will eventually make a more singular
public identity. Because, you know, I am known in different circles but those circles
don’t necessarily communicate with each other or care about each other.



How much do you feel like you’ve been able to bring those circles together throughout
your career?

Well, to a degree- I mean I don’t have much of a track record in the “art world” because
frankly the art world doesn't pay that much attention to me. But when I have been in
the art world, like I was in a show at the ICA Philadelphia where they showed a whole
bunch of video of my older work and then I did a voice over that you could listen to,
and the curator was really interested in connecting the dots. So in the visual art world
they have a very specific definition of performance, which is very much informed by
RoseLee Goldberg and Performa…and you know, concept. And it’s not even connected
to traditional skill sets- they are almost allergic to skill. It comes from a more conceptual
and visual point of view and not from a trained point of view where they are out to
communicate. Theatre tends to over explain everything, theatre steals from the avant-
garde. And great theatre is amazing, but there’s a lot of mediocre theatre. The times
I’ve been in theatre, people generally have no idea what I’ve been doing for the past
25 years. Exceptions being working with great directors I’ve worked with before, but
even then people don’t really know what I’ve done before that. Also there can be a bit of
condescension in theatre when it comes to “performance art”. And, well dance is more
inclusive- maybe because it’s the poor sister of the arts, [laughs] but I’ve had a lot of work
done in the dance theatre world and it’s more forgiving and more open and maybe it’s
because there is less money, less glory attached to it…you know, I don’t know. Music is
its own thing, doesn’t really have issues. There is music involved in all of it so it’s maybe
the most free flowing of all of those fields.



That is evident in your work and throughout the scope of your career, with music being a
vital part in most of your pieces. What does performance offer that two-dimensional art
doesn’t? And vice versa…​

On a profound level performance is ephemeral and visual art is tangible. And, you
know, whatever the effort is in making the work, when it’s over people who have
witnessed a performance witness it and it can be amazing and it can create memory
and myth attached to it- but then it's gone. Whereas, with visual art it’s there forever so
it really seems like a calling card. But the difference is- the reason one might engage in
performance is because of the urgency and the heightened public nature of it- there’s
nothing like it. Because the thing that defines performance is- it’s a spectacle, I don’t
mean a big thing, but some public display of energy that somebody or a bunch of people
are witnessing, and it becomes an event and that’s why it can be so thrilling because the
spectators are involved, you know, you’re in the room witnessing it. Whereas with visual
art it’s no less focused, it’s similar, but it’s usually private…a dialogue with oneself in
private instead of a dialogue with oneself and other people or things in public, [laughs].



Of course. And getting into the self, and your self-portraits, could you discuss your
relationship to self-portraiture?

Well basically, it’s self-scrutiny and role-play and investigation. When I began with
dance it was about the mirror, so the scrutiny in the mirror. Then when I quit dancing
and went to art school I discovered the notion of the self-portrait from one of my
teachers and then again it was about the mirror and it was a place I felt comfortable
with. There’s also the impulse to question oneself and regard oneself in a very focused
way, so that’s part of it. But also, if one has, or wants to have, a malleable physicality
which is a transformational part of self-portraiture, that can be an important part of it.
So that brings it back to performance, the beauty of changing oneself and transforming
oneself…basically I went from painting paintings to painting myself and then recording it
or showing it on stage.



After transforming yourself into so many different characters is it ever difficult to
imagine yourself as a blank canvas?

Umm, no. And when I was younger I was a cleaner blank canvas but now that I’m older
there’s more information on this canvas itself. But, no. No, the hardest thing for me to do
in a performance is to just be myself, I’m sort of a shy person. Even when I’m me and
not a specific character I’ve got to be doing something and figuring out what I’m doing in
performance- that delineate texture, goal, or journey and in that process I’m still asserting
some kind of texture of a character, not a specific character, you know what I mean?



Yeah, I think so. Would you say it’s about realizing something about yourself or about the
characters you’re creating?

You know it can be both, for me it can be being curious about a character or a subject and
wanting to investigate it. In that process I invariably have to dig into myself and either

discover new things about myself, or push myself in new directions. In the early drag
performance, it was really the most exciting thing I could think of doing because it was
about playing the opposite sex. So it was about observation and, you know, giving form
to those observations. Even though I hate the word drag because it has so many negative
and obvious cultural implications and people think they know what it is, for me it was
a very profound choice to be making when I first started doing it around 1980. And in
those days it was a less public form and still an edgy form.



It definitely wasn’t as mainstream as today where it’s on reality TV.​

Right, it’s a very specific clown-like way. Which is fine, it’s just that there are so many
different degradations of drag that for me, the choices of my drag characters were very
obtuse, you know, like Mona Lisa, Pina Baush, Barbette –the trapeze artist- they were
very obtuse choices…not Cher.



 Could you go into a little more detail about your transformative process?
Particularly when you first start to imagine a character.​

Well I guess initially it’s- do I care enough about the character, whether it’s a real
character or someone I’ve invented, do I care enough about them to want to pursue them
and flush them out? Am I curious enough? If I am then I also make choices based on- is
it interesting? Are they going through a right of passage or a dilemma? You know, doing
something about a happy person in performance can be really boring because how do you
articulate happiness, there is usually a stillness or a contentedness. Whereas, when there’s
turmoil or struggle or journey, that’s activated and that stuff is more doable to articulate
because there is more information involved and more details involved and more contrast
involved.



Right. Well, what would you say is your relationship to performative biography and
performative autobiography? Biography meaning of these characters, like the life of Egon
Schiele and Joni Mitchell.

I have done pieces about cultural icons, some dead, some living…really only Joni is
living. And I’ve also invented characters. And when I invent characters it's probably
more connected to autobiography in that it is a character that, if is not obviously close
to me, it is at least tapping into parts of me that I feel compelled to articulate or explore.
But even with an existing character, as with Egon or Joni, I feel the need to access
my own DNA because that’s what is going to activate that character. I mean you can
dress up like somebody and you can move like them and all that is fine but, unless you
give out a life and an intention, that can also be boring- or just obvious. For me it’s not
enough to just show up and look like a character, I need to then say- well, what is this
character going through? And even if it’s just going through their biography and their
story, it’s still being activated by my version of that story or my take on that story or my
impression of that story. So it’s me moving through space, or with Joni it’s me singing
her songs…as best as I can, achieving some semblance of her sound, some semblance of
the way she looks- I don’t really look like her so it’s more the synthesis of her aura or her

zeitgeist. Same thing with Egon, but I think I looked more like him when I was younger.
It’s just jumping into his body and then his story was so obvious and compelling and so
heartbreaking, it was like a crazy screenplay. So in a way the map was already laid out
for me because it was such a juicy story to bring to life.



So it’s a sort of balance of homage and mimicry having them live through you…

Yeah, its like if you put your hand up and look at your flat hand and put your other hand
behind it and they mirror each other. So I have to be directly behind the image of the
character, I’m in there- it’s 50/50. It’s as much about me as it is the character.

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​Which muse or character has been your favorite to study and develop?​​​

 Well, I don’t know…they are different and have asserted me in different ways
of my life. The two main ones have probably been Maria Callas and Egon Shiele, for
different reasons. Again, Egon because when I was in art school this one teacher turned
me onto his work and the self-portrait became a profound outlet for me, unexpected, but
also when I started doing performance because it really did breach those two worlds of
visual art and performance. And with Maria Callas it was music and singing and opera
and spectacle but it was- they’re both geniuses. With Callas it was about music, her
relationship to music. So I don’t really have a favorite but they’re kind of like my artistic
parents.



That’s a great way of looking at it. When creating new characters do you think of gender
early on in the process?

No, hmm… if I care about a character I will let myself be drawn to them. I mean
obviously when I was younger, if I was playing with gender, it was a more graceful thing
to be doing because I was able to transform myself more completely. Also with gender
performance at this point, it’s a bit less graceful when you’re older to be “in drag”
because [laughing] there’s just so much sad history attached to the old drag queen. I
mean…that’s not what it is for me. And culturally- in this culture- drag can be a trap. I
retired the Joni Mitchell performance, last place I did it was in Norfolk and I thought
that was a fitting place to retire it, not because I had any less of an attachment to it- and
the work did keep getting better and better- but it became a bit of a career albatross and
quite frankly I got tired of people calling me a female impersonator, a drag performer. It
diminished it and unfortunately it said more about them, but you know that’s where the
culture is so it got all the attention. And understandably because Joni Mitchell is
probably my only connection with mass culture, but still the drag drag drag drag thing
got boring. Every interview would be like ‘why Joni? Do you do Judy Collins, who
else do you do?’ I was like fuck you, what do you mean who else do I do? You wouldn’t
say that to Daniel Day Lewis when he’s doing My Left Foot it’s an interesting character
he’s portraying and well… blah blah blah. So you know, I’m very frugal about the cross
dressing thing now. Although I do admire younger performers who are doing
representations of gender in between, which I find quite thrilling, it’s like a big free for
all which is great. Where even my generation, where I came out of it, was more of a

political act, which that needed to happen from my point of view and it needed to happen
in a very clear cut, black and white way. Do you know what I mean?



Absolutely. Well, when I first remember seeing your work and reading about your career
it was in a class titled “solo performance art” and your work was in the ‘performing
gender’ section of the class and I remember thinking well no- there’s obviously so much
more to him and this work than performing gender, obviously it can’t be pigeon-holed
like that.

There’s a lot of um… you know I’m writing a lot, I’m beginning a memoir, and I’m also
going to be teaching next fall so I’m really thinking more and more about articulating the
different layers of the work I’ve done. And, you know, people always assume that the
work is solo, and no, I’ve done a lot of theatre pieces and dance theatre pieces sometimes
with 14 people. So there are different aspects to it, but the things that seem to always
surface from it are autobiography, gender… and that’s fine, that’s fine.



Being known primarily as a solo performance artist, what has your relationship with
collaboration been?

Well I’ve been collaborating with other artists since I began. I started working with a
filmmaker in 1983 because I wanted film in my work, originally super 8 and then 16th,
then I started filming on my own. And then I started working with my set designer in
1984, lighting designers, costume designers…I had a whole slew, I had a company, of
group pieces. I wound up doing fewer and fewer of them in the early 90s because 2 of
them died and it all kind of fell apart in a certain way, so maybe that’s why I’m more
known as a solo performer. But even with the concert stuff, it’s not just me on stage.
So I love collaborating, I understand the process, I feel like I’m a good director and a
generous collaborator and I’m open to other people’s input. I think it’s crucial to utilize
what people bring to the table, so I love collaborating.



I think most of us do, it’s the nature of artists to want to contribute. So, do you ever
think about low art or does popular art/entertainment influence or engage with you?

It does I guess…has…maybe? But I seem to have been drawn to the higher art impulse
because it was all new to me when I discovered it, like opera, ballet, music. I wasn’t
raised on that stuff- western European culture. I come from Jersey City. I come from
a cultural vacuum. So when I discovered all that stuff it’s like- woah! Whereas, for a
lot of people I think it was old hat- but for me it was astonishing. Popular culture as it
exists now…I am astonished how we keep thinking we’ve hit rock bottom and we keep
getting deeper and deeper. That said, there are artists who are dealing with that reality
and making work out of it like Ryan Trecartin, people who are making the noise of this
culture and making it into something else. I don’t know how it will read in 10 years, will
it still resonate the same way? People like Ryan- his work is remarkable- he’s hitting
on the pulse of something. This pulse is this kind of popular culture: out of control,
self-absorbed, on steroids. So it’s really like the big snowball that keeps perpetuating
mediocrity. But most of it doesn’t interest me- I mean I’m fascinated by it…reality

shows and The Walking Dead, I’m fascinated by. I think the zeitgeist of The Walking Dead is really
compelling and I think that’s why is it so popular. And I understand on a very profound
level tapping into people’s terror and fear and need for greater sensation, but there’s also
something very poetic about it…about a world where zombies are about to eat your flesh.



There definitely is! On that note, can you maybe give a few words of
encouragement or wisdom to a young artist trying to make it now?

Oh god. Umm, use your hands. Don’t just poke on glass, use your hands, they’re

connected to your body. You know- do both. And be mindful of the choices you make. If
you find yourself making fast work, ask yourself, why am I making fast work, am I doing
it to communicate or am I doing it because I’m in the habit of making things happen fast.
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