ENTERTAINMENT

CRAIG WILSON

Keith Hennessy, wearing gloves and heavy rubber pants, pulls a condom from Rick Russell's butt.

The first part, "My Race Riot," opens with the song, "I dreamed of a little boy." Hennessy is wearing oversized rubber wading pants held up by suspenders and dark glasses. There is an eroticism to his presence that is vaguely sinister and a bit dangerous. He recites a text while drinking alcohol and pouring it over his body. He ignites his alcohol-drenched hand and places it on his heart trying to take the heat of the outside world into his body. After a dance pitched low to the floor, he offers his personal response to the L.A. riots in a series of texts that force a white audience to confront their own potential for racism.

In the second section, "When Man Speaks to Himself," Hennessy is joined on stage by his assistant who is nude. In Cleveland, Rick Russell performed this part wearing short leather shorts and a dog collar. Hennessy gently cradles Russell in his arms before beginning to extract the texts which he reads from Russell's mouth, nose, ear, and butt. Hennessy's movement for this section involves the use of a bungee cord that allows him to leap ecstatically around the space or float horizontally near the floor. At the end Russell and Hennessy exit holding hands. This section is an exquisite blend of erotic images with a strong poetic text that carries the themes of racism and violence through the entire body.

The third section, "Are You My Brother?" is a dance while Hennessy names his friends and fellow artists. It concludes with a series of questions Hennessy throws out to the audience, asking us to ask them to each other, while he exits to prepare for the final sequence.

After some lively audience discussion, the fourth part, "a meeting," created for Cleveland, begins with the entry of Hennessy and Skot Gilmore singing "Bring Back My Bonnie to Me." They take off their shirts and Hennessy sits in a chair and, while Gilmore washes his feet, he tells a story that answers the question: why am I here? They exchange places and Gilmore answers the same question with his own stories about racism. Gilmore concludes, "Racism is a waste of time." The two men then put on the other's shirt and exit singing "Wade in the Water."

It is impossible to really describe the effect of Hennessy's metaphors except to say that like all good metaphors they are multi-layered and provoke a complex indi-

vidual response in each spectator. It confirmed a point Hennessy made, when he spoke with me, that he was on the margins of the gay community, as a sex-positive radical and pagan anarchist. "It's not a gay piece," he argued, "It's queer and it talks about racism." Both audiences seemed to respond to the provocation and the beauty of the work. Friday night's house was almost all white, except for a few Karamu House staff who did come, and largely straight. Sunday night's house was nearly full and had a good mix of black and white, straight and gay people. There were no signs of homophobia or racism in the audience. It was very much the kind of bridge building experience Hennessy intended it to be. It also confirmed his belief that the various diverse communities in Cleveland were not monolithic entities with rigid moral codes.

Despite the weekend's happy conclusion, I was still left with a set of disturbing questions about racism and homophobia in Cleveland. Why did the Performance Art Festival and Karamu House seem to ignore the content of Hennessy's work until the day before the performance? Why did the Free Times publish Frank Green's truly unfounded slur the day before the performance? Why did the Plain Dealer delete all references to Hennessy's being "queer," or a "fag," when it put together its listing for the Friday Magazine? What does it mean to the "homosexual" on the staff at Karamu House to hear gay sexuality rejected as disgusting and degrading? Did the Karamu House staff think of him, when they made those comments? If Karamu House values its queers, how can it change attitudes in the community? Does it want to make change in this area? Is the monolithic community Karamu House confronted Hennessy with a reality? What do we think about Hennessy's radical sexuality and politics in our own gay community? What can we do to make bridges that allow for more than mere, and often patronizing tolerance?

I'll carry these questions around with me for a long time as I move about the diverse communities of Cleveland. I'll be more wary and less naively optimistic than I've been. I'll also carry with me the memory of Keith Hennessy's gentleness, sincerity, and honesty as an artist who faced a negative situation and managed to transform it through his art.

Steve Simon, President

MARCH 11, 1994

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