olly has vested in me the opportunity to ask you to be lesbians for the afternoon," said the introductory speaker of Holly Hughes' one woman show, "Preaching to the Perverted." This past weekend, Hughes, one of four N.E.A. artists who were denied funding in 1998 because of their "indecent" work, drew enough of a crowd at Manbites Dog Theater to require an extra matinee. Surprising, considering Hughes' performance resembled the temper tantrum of a seven-year-old child trying to get attention.
While Hughes did get attention, she was not able to convert everyone in the audience to lesbianism, or convince them of her arguments. Her schtick is a tired jambalaya of "the gay agenda" and jibes at the Supreme Court, with Hughes mocking those who have denounced her as the audience laughed along.
The show opened with an answering machine message from the theater with a man denouncing "Preaching
Soon after, as Hughes threw mini American flags all over the stage, her performance became strikingly similar to a toddler, angry at his parents, getting up in front of an audience and yelling, "S-, f-, s-, f-!"
We are not enlightened by these words-we just marvel at their absurdity. Hughes' brand of shock value provokes the same reaction.
The N.E.A. probably did not revoke Hughes' funding out of homophobia. Although Hughes may push the outside of the envelope, she does so by pulling out a dildo on stage and saying the word "cunt," a feat that most able-bodied-but not necessarily sound of mind-people can easily accomplish.
Continuing with her anti-authority routine, Hughes took the usual tired potshots at the Bush administration. The whole theater exploded when she talked about protesting the inauguration by wearing a bunny suit (which she also wore for part of the show) to the rally. She described a scene where she chanted, "Cheney needs a heart, Bush needs a brain," the whole time while the people around her shouted slogans like "It takes a village, not a village idiot" and "No need for a honeymoon, we've already been screwed."
Although she is a staunch lesbian activist, Hughes took potshots at lesbians as well. Being a lesbian, she joked, must mean having, "an enlarged hypothalamus, which secretes special rights."
Hughes' show is humorous, but it may not be art. If anything, it is the kind of humor found in most college dorm rooms. Even Jesse Helms wouldn't have been able to stifle a laugh for some of it. But, like several in the audience, he wouldn't necessarily have been laughing with her.
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