I have a fearful reaction when I hear the phrases “performance art” and “experimental theater.” I’ve spent many a conversation about my school days trying to gloss over my theater background–I don’t want to be outed. Not that I even earned that despicable title of Theater Person while in high school; I spent more time backstage listening to Tool with the techies than preening for my breakthrough appearance as a maid in A Tale of Two Cities. My brief career did, unfortunately, extend beyond school property. I starred as Alice in a community theater production of Through the Looking Glass. I remember pissing off my director when I buzzed off most of my hair immediately after getting cast. But it was one of those experimental productions, so we worked it in–I got to be a post-modern angsty Alice…and I shudder when I remember how in the opening scene they made me talk to a Tamagotchi instead of a kitty. Ah, late-90s technophilia.
Unlike the dregs of boring fake-shocking and annoyingly mundane performace art staged by the same theater kids I disdained back in high school, Micki Pellerano‘s work is everything that I love. Mystical, weird, beautiful, deeply spiritual and symbolic, and most of all, powerful. While I am a definite novice when it comes to the occult, I am extremely attracted to it. I’m the type of girl who will run with any excuse to don a cape or drape herself in furs, so when I was assigned the role of Destroyer Goddess in Micki’s”The Elusinian Mysteries” at Wierd a little while ago, I just about creamed myself.
Videos by VICE
Basically my role was to come onstage, fuck everyone’s shit up, retreat, come back onstage to be dragged at the feet of a battling god, then to die quietly in front of an altar as the god was vanquished. Or, as Micki put it at rehearsal, “Curl up like a dead dragon on the floor.” When my dead dragon impression didn’t suit him he said, “You know what, don’t do dragon–a cat is fine.” Not surprising coming from a man who once lamented his status as a gay man repulsed by mainstream queer culture (then again, who isn’t repulsed by mincing party boys with glittery faces and half-shirts except for other mincing party boys with glittery faces and half-shirts?) by sighing, “I must have beheaded too many people in my last life to have ended up with this fate.”
All of his art is highly ritualized and heavily informed by a lifetime of spiritual research. “The Elusinian Mysteries,” according to Pellerano’s website, “started out as a tribute to the Crowley-Neuburg-Waddell interpretation of what may have occurred in the Hermetic Mystery Schools of Ancient Greece. But it quickly evolved into an interpretation of ancient Gnostic Texts combined with a ritual to conduct their immense power. Elements of Hermetic and Templar lore were also Incorporated.” Regardless of what lore was Incorporated where, the experience was enjoyable to those completely unacquainted with ancient texts or mystery schools. With blood and guts, fire, goat heads, tits (both real and fake), sword play, loincloths, and a score of hooded noise provided by Skin Drink, it was a definite crowd-pleaser. I documented the rehearsals as well as the backstage scene at Wierd.
The plot centered around a white-haired Goddess giving birth to two gods accompanied by her handmaidens.
We were low-budget. This is a birthing goddess’s body.
Ever the taskmaster, Micki led us in rehearsals that lasted for hours.
Having plenty of wine on hand didn’t hurt.
There are no better babe accessories than a sword and a smoke.
On the night of the performance everyone had to get ready in the tiny office of Home Sweet Home, aka the dressing room.
Christiana Key was the violinist. Here’s her costume, a true lady’s counterpart to the male loin-cloth-and-hoods combo.
Not that there is anything wrong with a bunch of skinny dudes free-balling underneath some seriously skimpy loincloths.
The goddess Laura (R) out of costume and the handmaiden Carly in costume.
My destroyer goddess costume was bananas. I felt like the Beastmistress, but with black-metal-meets-silent-film-star makeup. And of course somehow I was the only one who had to show actual tit, but we blacked out my nipple to make it look extra grim.
Alex played the six-titted god that the resurrected goddess gave birth to after the initial god she birthed slayed her. Confused?
You needn’t be. All you need to know is that the cups of those three bras were stuffed with water balloons filled with a mixture of white tempera paint and water that the handmaidens pierced so they could drink from the fake breasts, one of which fell out and was picked up by an enthusiastic member of the audience during the performance.
The performance was a brilliant success despite much carnage among the cast members. I sprained my ankle during the first of three kills (I had to eviscerate the handmaidens at the behest of the firstborn god) and two of the handmaidens sliced open their fingers on the razor blades they used to pierce the balloon breasts so they could drink from them. Someone’s blood dripped on me as I lay “dead like a dragon on the floor” at the end of the performance, but such is art.
These staged performances are just one of many attributes of Pellerano’s art, which extends into the worlds of music, drawing, and filmmaking. He recently had his first solo show at Live With Animals and plays keyboard and bass in both Cult of Youth and Backworld. He’s directed four short films and is currently working on a fifth. He’s staging a new performance at the “O.T.K. Discipline!” event inspired by Fellini’s Satyricon and Isadora Duncan. It is curated by Gio Black Peter and Brian Kenny at Starr Space tonight.
Here are some photos of the actual performance by Liz Armstrong
