Early Bird, 2004
Early Bird is a performance where Dew Drop Lady, a character I embody who
is
based upon my long lineage of Jewish mothers, is inserted into a community
of
Brighton Beach elders. Dew Drop Lady joins the senior citizens in the context
of a bench-lined sitting area in front of Key Food. She is wearing her
standard uniform of housecoat, schmatah, and a rhinestone purse. Although
she looks
like many of her park bench neighbors, the seams of difference emerge in her
conversations with the Brighton locals.
A zone of social safety is established in sharing Life Saver candies,
discussing retirement, and telling Passover jokes. As Dew Drop Lady’s
conversations
with the seniors lengthen, age is not the expected barrier that separates
her
from her park bench neighbors. Dew Drop Lady experiences the chasm of racial
bias when she shares that she is not only white and Jewish, but black as well.
This information is met with disbelief and denial, but a painful racism that
reeks of the “old world”.
Over the past 6 years, I have been inserting the characters from Quadroon,
a
1998 video installation and performance: Dew Drop Lady, Butch in the Kitchen,
Dee, and Janie Bell into “naturalized” environments. From her
beach chair in
an exhibition space, Dew Drop Lady discussed wares in her Harriet Carter
catalogues; Butch in the Kitchen bar-b-qued heart-shaped hamburgers at a Chelsea
street festival; Dee smoked cigarettes in front of paintings and boogied to
disco music on her walkman during an art opening; a gallery audience’s
ringing
cell phones had callers in search of a figure based upon my late grandmother,
Janie Bell. The chance occurrences in these characters’ unscripted and
real-time
interactions generate surprising, hilarious, and often poignant content.
My initial intention with Early Bird was to uncover a humorous dialogue that
would take place with the Brighton Beach residents - a conversation that would
recall my childhood, family dinners, and the Borscht Belt. I marveled at how
a woman went running upstairs to get Dew Drop Lady a sweater. I felt
heartened by the discussions about recycling soda bottles, technology, and
even the
hetero-scripted flirtations between Dew Drop Lady and a single senior man.
The
candy-coated pleasure derived from these interactions was only a smokescreen
for an underlying white supremacy.
My artistic goal is to utilize the tool of performance to survey social
oppressions. In Early Bird, the privileging of the Jewish grandmother persona,
combined with my light-skinned black complexion, enabled me to use my hybridity
strategically. Like a “canary in a coal mine”, my eyes are set
to sight the
toxicity of social conditions that are often invisible to others. Early Bird
reveals the complexity of relationships between older and younger generations.
It also uncovers the the overlaps and schisms that happen when a community
of
white Jews and an interracial Jew share a bench, side by side.
- by Danielle Abrams
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