Spoken word, live music, narrated memoir with cartoons, photos and maps, personal objects given away — let’s just say performance art is the name of the game beginning at 7 p.m. Friday at Hastings- Cone Gallery.
Seattle performance artist and writer Rachel Kessler will present her new manuscript, “Christian Charm Workbook: Leaving and Belonging,” a work in progress that combines an interactive reading with visual references all in the vein of Tina Fey’s “Bossypants” and Caitlin Moran’s “How to Be a Woman.”
But that’s not all. Joining Kessler for this multi-media extravaganza are three local writers — Merna Hecht, Janie Miller and Liz Shepherd — plus guest musicians Kat Eggleston, Charles Reed and Michael Whitmore.
Kessler’s piece is about growing up in Seattle in the 1960s and 70s with activist hippy parents seeking both a spiritual life as Jesus People and a place in the local music scene. Striking out on her own in the 1990s, Kessler landed in riot grrrl punk rock feminism, eventually settling down in Seattle to raise her two daughters.
“I had kids and became more focused on my writing and performance art,” she said. “For a long time, I blamed the church for my adolescent angst, but my daughters have grown up in a non-church environment, and I watch them go through the same pain. It’s been eye-opening.”
A press release describes Kessler’s work as an examination of the intersection of religion and puberty “drawing on neuroscience about the teenage brain and old stories of saints and other spiritual seekers who began having visions around the onset of puberty.” Her work has appeared in USA Today and other publications, as well as the Henry Art Gallery and Frye Art Museum.
“Rachel is well recognized as a poet and performer in Seattle with a great body of work,” said Shepherd, the Northwest Film Forum’s youth programs director and former Beachcomber arts editor. “She wanted to perform on Vashon and involve Vashon people.”
When asked why she chose to introduce her new work on the island, Kessler gave a nod to the island’s talent.
“I’ve always been fascinated by Vashon — all the artists and writers. I also wanted Liz to tell her stories about being a children’s film programmer and about giving away things. I’ve heard Janie read her poetry and seen her slide show and selfishly wanted to hear more, and I’ve known Merna through the Writers in the Schools programs. She’s been an important mentor to me.”
Hecht will read a piece about her recent visit to Guernica, Spain, on the 78th anniversary of the city’s bombing during World War II. She plans to show slides about the bombing, hopeful aspects of the Guernica Peace Museum and Picassco’s painting that memorialized the atrocity.
“Given my work with high school-age refugees who have all experienced violent conflicts in their home countries and my interest in educating young people to be informed citizens … able to work toward a far more peaceful world than at present, I had long wanted to visit Guernica and the Peace Museum,” Hecht wrote.
Miller is a poet and essayist who recently moved to the island. She directs poetry studies at the University of Washington, teaches at Richard Hugo House and is working on a manuscript exploring extinction. In an email Miller wrote, “My slide show performance will continue these threads: using the performance of text as an image to explore the erasure of species and our relationship to nature.
As for Shepherd, she will make Kessler wait a bit longer for her stories about being a film programmer. She described her own performance as a piece about objects that shape people’s lives, “what we try to hold on to, what I’ve collected over the years. And then I’ll give some of them away,” Shepherd said. “It’s about loss and life, the experiences of people who have reached an age where they begin to lose people they love.”
While donations will be gratefully accepted, the show is free and according to Shepherd, “should be an unusual, fresh literary event that is interactive and deeply connected to the audience.”
