In the first of an exciting new series at Inman Square’s Vivid Oblivion, five multidisciplinary artists gave performances exploring the particular kinds of pain that come with being a femme. It was a windy Friday night as an eclectic group packed into the cozy 1,200-square-foot studio on August 9. The set was minimal. There was only a white curtain and a shimmering floor.
Studio founder NiFe Lucey-Brzoza kicked things off with the event’s titular piece, Leaves Some Kind of Residue. She undressed herself with eyes shut, gently folding each item of clothing after removing it. In the speech that followed, Lucey-Brzoza jumped between monologue and meditation. She first commented on how her mother told her “If you find yourself in a dark alley with a knife against your neck…. scream! My momma taught me that… That’s good momma wisdom right there.” In another moment, she broke the fourth wall and spoke as an audience member: “At least I saw some tits. … What the hell have I gotten myself into?” Ultimately, these comments implicated the viewer in their own acts of looking—critiquing the audience’s own tendency to judge a woman’s body.
“Do you feel safe with my eyes closed?” Lucey-Brzoza concluded. “How about now?” She finally opened her eyes, shifting her gaze throughout the audience. It was a jarring reassertion of her power, an invitation to engage.
What followed were several other compelling and at-times-awkward encounters, made more intimate by virtue of the small venue. In Loose, Laila J. Franklin propelled herself across the stage in a graceful and captivating dance. Kledia Spiro painstakingly walked on all fours for her piece Te dua aq shumë: I love you so much, ripping excerpts of her father’s love poems off of a hand-fashioned belt and handing them to the audience. In the cramped room, audience members had to scoot forward and backward to make way for Spiro. She then called upon everyone to read their lines aloud, first one at a time and then all together. The result was a jumble of utterances, a verbal exquisite corpse, voices timid and bold and everything in between. Deeply collaborative and playful, it felt like a conversation with a good friend, a religious ritual, a rite of passage all at once.
Nora Stephens slowly untangled herself from a soft sculpture by Kate Holcombe Hale while singing “No Need to Argue” by The Cranberries. Her voice shook with all the emotion of a lovelorn woman finally calling a relationship quits. She drifted in and out from behind the curtain, finally dragging the sculpture offstage.
