American Theatre: John Kelly
Posted November 30, 2010 at 5:51 pm
20 Questions
Award-winning performance artist JOHN KELLY is perhaps best known for his uncanny portrayal of singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell—just don’t remind him of that. The jack-of-allarts chafes at categorization. Kelly’s Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte, about Viennese expressionist Egon Schiele, plays this month at La MaMa E.T.C. in New York City, alongside a gallery of selfportrait photographs of Kelly as Schiele.
You’ve done Pass the Blutwurst, Bitte twice before.
When I fi rst did it in the mid-’80s, it was on the heels of having grown up assuming I’d be a visual artist. But I discovered dance, trained for that, quit, and then went back to art school. I began formulating my own works and knew this would be a perfect marriage of my past as a dancer and as a visual artist. Ellen Stewart has been hounding me to redo it. I received a New American Masterpieces grant from the NEA, and that forced me to reckon with the fact I have to jump around on stage like a 27-year-old again. I’m excited—there are two new scenes and a new fi lm section. It’s essentially theatre/dance-theatre. But the semantics around that get really boring. When an actor/performer makes a work, they say, “Oh, it’s a one-man show,” but that’s not what I do. I don’t come from theatre and never studied it, even though I’ve been on Broadway and just made a movie with James Franco.
Were you in Howl?
No, The Clerk’s Tale—it’s based on a poem. I went kicking and screaming into acting. But why am I talking about turf issues? I’m a hybrid artist—a dancer, director, choreographer, actor, performance artist, visual artist, singer and writer. Now I’m a video artist, too.
What drew to you Schiele?
The beauty of his work immediately struck me—and his tragic story. He was born in 1890 and died at 28. He was imprisoned for pornography. They burned one of his drawings in the courtroom. He and his wife died in an infl uenza epidemic. He was a genius at making incredible artwork and shoving his finger in society’s face. He also had buyers—there was a market for erotic art in those days.
Do you feel like your work thumbs its nose at society?
When I was young—yes. After I quit art school, I went to the Anvil, which was a club where Tanya Ransom lip-synched to Nina Hagen in punk drag. No tits, teased-out hair—a real gender-fuck. It was the strongest performance I’d ever seen in my life. I started doing my own version. It was before drag and other aspects of underground culture had been co-opted and became Muzak. Now it seems any artist, wannabe artist, or anybody for that matter, has to be outrageous on some level, whether it’s visually or conceptually. Culture has become love-ego-puke. That’s a Joni Mitchell quote, “ego-puke.”
What do you make of an artist like Lady Gaga?
It’s hard to know what her choices are versus those around her. Sure, she’s ripping off Leigh Bowery, but that’s called appropriating these days, which is fi ne, so long as you do something else with it. Nothing comes from nowhere: It either comes from nature or human nature. But I do like that she’s pushing the envelope and making people feel weird.
Do you consider yourself hip?
I’ve been hip a few times. I’ve had a few bounces in my career. And I risk invisibility. When I’m dead, I’ll be lauded as “the artist’s artist.” But I keep working. I’ve had a number of awards, but the struggles remain. In art school they didn’t teach me to run myself as a business. I’d love to be a whore. I’m just too old or don’t know how! (Laughter.)
I’ll make that the headline: “I’d love to be a whore.”
People say, “What about the press?” And I say, “Press is great, but you can’t eat it and you can’t fuck it.” The media is shifting. My work is ephemeral. Actually, my next piece is a monologue about the experience of breaking my neck in a trapeze accident seven years ago. It’ll be done in April at P.S. 122. I figured if I did a piece about the broken neck experience, once I’m laid up on the gurney I could escape into video dramatizations of Caravaggio’s paintings, which I shot in Italy.
Do you ever feel boxed in as a Joni Mitchell impersonator?
Yes! It started at Wigstock in 1985 and has grown over the years. She’s come to the show three times, and once gave me a dulcimer. It’s a structured, rigorous performance. I sing music from all aspects of her career, so that’s three vocal registers. And there’s live instrumentation with her crazy open tunings. But it consistently gets relegated to drag show or female-impersonator status. That really pisses me off.
What’s your idea of “spiritual bliss”?
Being completely in the moment. Of all the practices, Buddhism is probably the one I’m most curious about. It’s not voodoo. “Original sin” is voodoo. I went to Catholic school for 12 years.
Do you have any phobias?
Yes—of dying without having done everything I’ve wanted to.