Blacklips Performance Cult was a late-night performance collective that rose from New York City’s queer underground between 1992 to 1995. Founded by ANOHNI with Johanna Constantine and Psychotic Eve in the summer of 1992, the ensemble of drag queens, punk women, artists, and students presented a new, original play at 1:00 a.m. each Monday night at the storied Pyramid Club on Avenue A in New York’s East Village.
Answering the devastation of the city’s AIDS crisis with tenderness, surrealism, hysteria, and enactments of violence, the experimental theatrical collective created a glitz-and-gore world using live music, ensemble work, lip-sync, dance, elaborate makeup, handmade costumes, street-garbage sets, and emotionally hardcore performances. Offering up their final show, 13 Ways to Die, in March 1995, Blacklips was an outlier of its time, but the group’s incendiary productions formed a vital space of congregation and experimentation that continues to reverberate today.
This screening celebrates the legacy of Blacklips with a “Double Frankenstein” bill, highlighting the adaption of classic horror as a vehicle for the collective’s style. Starring glam-punk icon and D Generation bassist Howie Pyro as the monster, and makeup artist Kabuki Starshine as the bride, Frankenstein is a dazzling example from the more than 100 plays the group produced.
In a given week, the Blacklips audience might encounter a surrealist spectacle (Descent into Hell, The Birth of Anne Frank), a furiously camp conspiracy theory (Class 9 Nuclear Mishap Greenwood Mississippi), a dreamy existential extraterrestrial drama (Clayworld, Seven), an entire evening concerning Death, a remake of Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, or explorations of the lives and legacies of historical figures (Jack the Ripper, Candy Darling, The Ascent of Marsha P. Johnson).
Blacklips members ANOHNI and Marti Wilkerson, co-editors of the book Blacklips, Her Life and Her Many, Many Deaths (2023) will be joined in conversation with Lia Gangitano, founder/director of Participant Inc, and Stuart Comer, MoMA’s Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance.
Program:
Blacklips Performance Cult. Frankenstein Screen Tests. 1994. Directed by Flloyd. 2023 “Rapture” edit by ANOHNI. Super 8 film transferred to video, 7 min. With Hattie Hathaway, James F. Murphy, Johanna Constantine, ANOHNI, Psychotic Eve, Lulu, Sissy Fitt, Pearls, Herr Klunch, Lily of the Valley, Holly Fur, Lost Forever
Blacklips Performance Cult. Frankenstein. Live at the Pyramid Club, January 18, 1993. By Lost Forever. Video-8 transferred to digital, 64 min. With Johanna Constantine, ANOHNI, Howie Pyro, Kabuki Starshine, James F. Murphy, Sissy Fitt, Flloyd, Lulu, Psychotic Eve, Hattie Hathaway, Lost Forever, Holly Fur. Hosted by Mrs. Clark Render