Holly Hughes (performance artist)

Last updated
Holly Hughes
Born (1955-03-10) March 10, 1955 (age 69)
Saginaw, Michigan
Nationality American
Education Kalamazoo College
Notable worksWell of Horniness (1983), Clit Notes (1996)
Notable awards7 grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Obie Award and Lambda Book Award

Holly Hughes (born March 10, 1955) is an American lesbian performance artist. [1] [2]

Contents

She began as a feminist painter in New York City but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays explore sexuality, body images and the female mind. [3] She is the recipient of several awards including the Lambda Book Award and an Obie Award. She is a professor of art and design as well as theater and drama at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. [4]

Biography

Born in Saginaw, Michigan, Hughes graduated from Kalamazoo College in 1977 and moved to New York City two years later [1] to become a feminist painter. [5] She worked as a waitress to support herself but felt unfulfilled, later writing: "Why had I moved to New York City to live in an even crummier apartment and do the same things that I was doing in Kalamazoo?" [6] She saw[ when? ] a poster promoting a "Double X-rated Christmas party" to be held in the basement of a Catholic church. There she found lesbian women stripping, kissing booths, and a highly sexual atmosphere. She eagerly attended many such parties, became involved with the group and began doing theater with them because "that's what they were doing". [6] Hughes' first performance at the WOW Café in the early 1980s was a piece called "My Life as a Glamour Don't", about various fashion mistakes. She followed this up with "Shrimp in a Basket" and then her breakthrough Well of Horniness (1983). [6] At the WOW Café, Hughes felt that she was able to "tell the stories she so desperately wanted to be told as a child."[ citation needed ]

Hughes wrote, directed and performed in Dress Suits to Hire (1987). [1] [7] Critic Stephen Holden commented, in reviewing the play, "While Ms. Hughes's more poetic writing recalls Sam Shepard, the campy B-movie side of her sensibility shows her to be equally in tune with John Waters's movies and Charles Busch's drag extravaganzas." [8] Focusing on the subjects of sexuality, masturbation and Jesus, her plays usually explore issues that she confronted as a young woman in college.[ citation needed ] In 1990 Hughes earned national attention as one of the so-called NEA Four, artists whose funding from the National Endowment for the Arts ("NEA") was vetoed. [9] [10]

In 1996, Hughes released perhaps her most famous and influential performances: Clit Notes. In this piece, Hughes performs several roles: herself at different ages, her mother, and various lovers that she has had. [11] Hughes uses her writing to explore herself and to understand the events that have shaped her life, often using her writing to escape from elements that she perceives as repressive. [12] In 1998, Hughes co-edited an anthology of queer solo performance with David Roman called O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance, which included her own Clit Notes. A review by Don Shewey in The Advocate noted the cultural and sexual diversity of contributors. [13]

In February 2017 Hughes organized a D.I.Y. style cabaret-style series of performance events protesting newly elected Donald Trump's presidency entitled "Not My President's Day." Archived 2017-02-23 at the Wayback Machine These events which were organized by participants in over sixty cities including Ann Arbor, Brno, Chicago, Brooklyn, Gateshead, and San Jose raised funds for organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the A.C.L.U. She "worked with artists across the globe to build a loose network of over 35 Presidents Day events spanning the U.S., Britain and Italy. Most of the events used some variant on the names "Not My President's Day" or "Bad and Nasty" (derived from President Trump's reference to "bad hombres" and his description of Hillary Clinton as a "nasty woman" during the presidential debates)." [14]

Hughes works as a professor at the University of Michigan's School of Art & Design. [15] In 2010, she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. [16]

Bibliography

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ron Athey</span> American performance artist

Ron Athey is an American performance artist associated with body art and with extreme performance art. He has performed in the U.S. and internationally. Athey's work explores challenging subjects like the relationships between desire, sexuality and traumatic experience. Many of his works include aspects of S&M in order to confront preconceived ideas about the body in relation to masculinity and religious iconography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cherríe Moraga</span> American writer and activist (born 1952)

Cherríe Moraga is a Xicana feminist, writer, activist, poet, essayist, and playwright. She is part of the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the Department of English since 2017, and in 2022 became a distinguished professor. Moraga is also a founding member of the social justice activist group La Red Xicana Indígena, which is network fighting for education, culture rights, and Indigenous Rights. In 2017, she co-founded, with Celia Herrera Rodríguez, Las Maestras Center for Xicana Indigenous Thought, Art, and Social Practice, located on the campus of UC Santa Barbara.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alix Olson</span> American poet (born 1975)

Alix L. Olson is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. She uses her work to address issues of capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. She identifies as a queer feminist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Fleck (actor)</span> American actor (b. 1951)

John Fleck is an American actor and performance artist. He has performed in numerous TV shows, including Babylon 5, Carnivàle, Murder One, and the Star Trek franchise. He also appeared in Howard The Duck, Waterworld and the music video for the ZZ Top song "Legs". He made a minor appearance in the Seinfeld episode "The Heart Attack". He played a minor character during the sixth season of Weeds. He wrote and performed "Mad Women" at La MaMa E.T.C.

Amelia Jones, originally from Durham, North Carolina, is an American art historian, art theorist, art critic, author, professor and curator. Her research specialisms include feminist art, body art, performance art, video art, identity politics, and New York Dada. Jones's earliest work established her as a feminist scholar and curator, including through a pioneering exhibition and publication concerning the art of Judy Chicago; later, she broadened her focus on other social activist topics including race, class and identity politics. Jones has contributed significantly to the study of art and performance as a teacher, researcher, and activist.

E. Patrick Johnson is the dean of the Northwestern University School of Communication. He is the Annenberg University Professor of Performance Studies and professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University. Johnson is the founding director of the Black Arts Consortium at Northwestern. His scholarly and artistic contributions focus on performance studies, African-American studies and women, gender and sexuality studies.

Marga Gomez is a comedian, writer, performer, and teaching artist from Harlem, New York. She has written and performed in thirteen solo plays which have been presented nationally and internationally. Her acting credits include Off-Broadway and national productions of The Vagina Monologues with Rita Moreno. She also acted in season two of the Netflix series Sense8. At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Gomez pivoted to adapting and presenting her work for live streaming. She has been featured in online theater festivals from New York to San Diego, as well as a five-week virtual run for Brava, SF where she is an artist-in-residence. She is a GLAAD media award winner and recipient of the 2020 CCI Investing in Artists grant.

Esther Newton is an American cultural anthropologist who performed pioneering work on the ethnography of lesbian and gay communities in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lisa Kron</span> American actress and playwright (born 1961)

Elizabeth S. "Lisa" Kron is an American actress and playwright. She is best known for writing the lyrics and book to the musical Fun Home for which she won both the Tony Award for Best Original Score and the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical. Fun Home was also awarded the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015 and the 2014 Obie Award for writing for musical theater.

Ana María Simo is a New York playwright, essayist and novelist. Born in Cuba, educated in France, and writing in English, she has collaborated with such experimental artists as composer Zeena Parkins, choreographer Stephanie Skura and filmmakers Ela Troyano and Abigail Child.

Alina Troyano, more commonly known as Carmelita Tropicana, is a Cuban-American stage and film lesbian actress who lives and works in New York City.

Split Britches is an American performance troupe, which has been producing work internationally since 1980. Academic Sue Ellen Case says "their work has defined the issues and terms of academic writing on lesbian theater, butch-femme role playing, feminist mimesis, and the spectacle of desire". In New York City Split Britches have long standing relationships with La Mama Experimental Theatre Company, where they are a resident company, Wow Café, which Weaver and Shaw co-founded, and Dixon Place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lois Weaver</span> American actress

Lois Weaver is a Guggenheim-winning artist, activist, writer, director, and Professor of Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University of London. She is currently a Wellcome Trust Fellow in Engaging Science. Her work centers on feminism, human rights and possibilities for public participation. Active for over four decades, she is the founding member of significant New York theatre companies Spiderwoman Theater (1975), Split Britches (1980) and WOW (1980). Weaver came to London to take on the role of artistic director for Gay Sweatshop Theatre Company in 1992. She lives in New York and London.

Julie Tolentino is a visual and performance artist, dancer, and choreographer. Her work is influenced from an array of visual, archival, and movement strategies.

WOW Café Theater is a feminist theater space and collective in East Village in New York City. In the mid-1980s, WOW Cafe Theater was central to the avant garde theatre and performance art scene in the East Village, New York City. Among the artists who have presented at the space are Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Patricia Ione LLoyd, Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, Dancenoise, Carmelita Tropicana, Eileen Myles, Split Britches, Seren Divine, Johnny Science, and The Five Lesbian Brothers.

The Five Lesbian Brothers is an American theater company that focuses on plays and literature on lesbian and feminist topics. Their work has been produced and performed in several cities in the United States, and they have been recognized with several industry awards. Reviewers have described their performance style as being "loosely structured" and "outrageous", more focused on the expression of ideas and themes than on theatrical conventions of the time and genre. Their works are created collaboratively by the troupe, made up of Maureen Angelos, Babs Davy, Dominique Dibbell, Peg Healey and Lisa Kron.

Dress Suits to Hire is a play written by Holly Hughes and originally performed by the Lesbian and Feminist performance group, Split Britches. It premiered in 1987 at Performance Space 122 in Manhattan's East Village. The play is essentially a lesbian love story told in the overheated style of film noir, also drawing upon images from pulp fiction; The show has been revived several times since its premiere, with the original cast of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver (Michigan) reprising their roles. The show won OBIE Awards for both Shaw and Hughes.

Monica Palacios is a Chicana lesbian American playwright and performer, specialising in Chicana, queer, feminist, and lesbian themes. She has charted the intersection of queer and Latina identities in Latinx communities, with their mutually marginalising impact. A trailblazer stand-up comedian in the 1980s and 1990s, Palacios is now better known for her work as an award winning playwright and activist. Her works are taught in many schools and colleges, where she has served frequently as a director of student theatre.

Hot Peaches was a drag theatre company in New York City that would put on one play a week, active from the 1970s-1990s. Hot Peaches was founded by Jimmy Camicia in 1972, who encountered a group of drag queens and began writing work for them to perform. Their work has been described as "political camp, dominated by drag".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madeleine Olnek</span> Director and playwright

Madeleine Olnek is an American independent film director, producer, screenwriter, and playwright. She has written 24 plays and three feature films, including Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, The Foxy Merkins, and Wild Nights with Emily. Her feature films have been described as "madcap comedies with absurdist leanings" and are all centered around queer characters.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gianoulis, Tina. "Hughes, Holly (b. 1955)" (PDF). glbtqarchive.com.
  2. ↑ Klein, Alvin (25 July 1993). "'Too Shocking' Sends Urgent Messages". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  3. ↑ Davy, Kate (1993). "Chapter 2: From Lady Dick to Ladylike: The Work of Holly Hughes". In Hart, Lynda; Phelan, Peggy (eds.). Acting Out: Feminist Performances. University of Michigan Press. pp. 55–84. ISBN   9780472064793.
  4. ↑ "Holly Hughes". stamps.umich.edu. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  5. ↑ Schneider, Rebecca (1989). "Holly Hughes: Polymorphous Perversity and the Lesbian Scientist". The Drama Review. 33 (1): 171–183. doi:10.2307/1145952. JSTOR   1145952.
  6. 1 2 3 Asnes, Miriam. Interview with Holly Hughes. OCLC   133089381.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
  7. ↑ Holly Hughes: Polymorphous Perversity and the Lesbian Scientist, interview with Rebecca Schneider, TDR, Vol. 33, No. 1 (Spring, 1989), pp. 171–83
  8. ↑ Stephen Holden (February 3, 1988). "Theater: 'Dress Suits'". New York Times .
  9. ↑ Wilmoth, Charles M.; Hughes, Holly (1991). "The Archaeology of Muff Diving: An Interview with Holly Hughes". TDR. 35 (3): 216–220. doi:10.2307/1146145. ISSN   1054-2043. JSTOR   1146145.
  10. ↑ Anita Gates (May 10, 2000). "Theater Review: A Frontline Soldier in the Culture Wars Lobs Grenades". The New York Times .
  11. ↑ Wilkinson, Kathleen (April 1998). "Holly Hughes takes Clit Notes to new heights". Lesbian News. 23 (9): 30.
  12. ↑ Hall, Lynda (January 1997). "Holly Hughes performing: self-invention and body talk". Postmodern Culture. 7 (2). doi:10.1353/pmc.1997.0010. S2CID   143902692.
  13. ↑ Shewey, Don (September 1, 1998). "O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance". The Advocate. Regent Media. p. 55.
  14. ↑ "Celebrating 'Nasty Women' and 'Bad Hombres'". Detroit News. Retrieved 2017-02-22.
  15. ↑ "Holly Hughes". stamps.umich.edu. University of Michigan. Retrieved 4 February 2016.
  16. ↑ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation - Holly Hughes". www.gf.org. John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Retrieved 4 February 2016.

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.