Austrian Premiere
The Canadian cult director Bruce LaBruce will present his first work for the theatre at the donaufestival. His “Fassbinder-Pasolini-Musical“ Cheap Blacky, a revue about society, oppression, obsession and the anarchic power of sexuality, transforms the radical world of thoughts and images of the queercore-movement and queer cinema into a new theatrical dimension: a performance that has its spiritual home in the environment of films like “Hustler White”, the political porno “Skin Flick” or the gay RAF revoultion-epic “The Raspberry Reich”. ”Cheap Blacky“ was conceived at the HAU-Theatre in Berlin in cooperation with the ingenious performance-group CHEAP surrounding Susanne Sachsse, who, like the US drag-star Vaginal Davis, has acted in films by Bruce LaBruce. This group of “ousiders and expatriates”, already legendary under the name “The Blackies”, also includes the artist and filmmaker Christoph Chemin.
“(...) After taking Fassbinder’s classic, overlooked movie “Whity“ (1971) as a starting point, somehow three other texts emerged: John Huston’s “Reflections in a Golden Eye“ (1967), Joseph Losey’s “Boom“ (1968), and Passolini’s “Teorema“ (1968). All of these films emerged in a period of great political, social, and sexual upheaval, an era of disillusionment with the status quo witnessing the final death throes of any lingering innocence left over from the repressed and complacent fifties and early sixties. I’ve always been drawn to this cinematic historical moment, in which old forms and narrative habits were dismantled, in which exhausted myths were deflated and demystified.
After studying and work shopping the texts, certain patterns began to emerge. In each narrative, “the cult of family life“, as the mother in Teorema terms it, is challenged, broken down, or decimated by an interloper, a stranger, a hustler. Each story involves the nuclear family in crisis, resulting in some sort of sexual and/or spiritual transformation or transfiguration of its members. And each text is interlaced with the dynamics of domination and submission that are built into class and race relations. The modus operandi of Blacky is to mash-up these texts in order to distill them to their essences, and to act them out symbolically in the guise of various forms that I’m attracted to: cinematic conventions, slapstick, burlesque, vaudeville, modern dance, the movie soundtrack, avant-garde performance, and good old-fashioned exhibitionism. I hope the audience will enjoy it.“ Bruce LaBruce
The ambiguities, lecture by Bruce LaBruce , Fr. 25 April, 5 pm,
Unabhängiges Literaturhaus Niederösterreich, Kunstmeile Krems, Steiner Landstraße 3, 3500 Krems-Stein
Otto; or, up with Dead People – A film by Bruce LaBruce, Fr. 25 April
after the performance at the the Stadtsaal at about 8.30 pm
More information: www.ottothezombie.com
Cheap Blacky
Directed by - Bruce LaBruce, Space and Video - Christophe Chemin, Costume - Rick Owens
With Dragan Asler, John Blue, Tim Blue, Christophe Chemin, Vaginal Davis, Daniel
Hendrickson, Assaf hochman, Tan Binh Nguyen, Susanne Sachsse, Marc Siegel
Supported by funds from Hauptstadtkulturfonds. A production by CHEAP, in
coproduction with Hebbel am Ufer Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg and the Theaterhaus
Gessnerallee Zurich.
Otto; or, Up with Dead People
A film by Bruce LaBruce (D/CA 2008), 94 mins.
With Jey Crisfar, Marcel Schlutt, Christophe Chemin, Katharina Klewinghaus, Susanne
Sachsse, Guido Sommer Production: EXISTENTIAL CRISES PRODUCTIONS