E2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020
BY GEOFF EDGERSLike so many, national arts reporter Geoff
Edgers has been grounded by the coronavirus.
So every Friday, he hosts The Washington Post’s
first Instagram Live show from his barn in
Massachusetts. So far, he has interviewed,
among others, comedian Hannah Gadsby, cel-
list Yo-Yo Ma and basketball legend Kareem
Abdul-Jabbar. Recently, Edgers chatted with
comedian Lewis Black. Here are excerpts from
their conversation.
(This has been edited for clarity and length.)
Q: We all know you from your comedy and
from being on “The Daily Show.” But we also
know your temperament is important. I’d
never met you before last night, when we got
on the phone to set up this Instagram Live.
You were having some technical problems,
and... I felt like your ire was directed at
Instagram, right?
A: Oh, it was directed at Instagram. And it’s
always directed at Facebook because I think
Facebook was the beginning of the road to
madness.
Q: You don’t like putting pictures from your
family events and connecting with old friends
on Facebook?
A: I don’t have enough time during the day to
do the things before all of this.... And it’s like,
you know, Bobo wants to be a friend. Well,
sure. But I’ve never met you and I feel badly
because I don’t want to reject you.
Q: Is Donald Trump good or bad for a
comedian? Does he help you or does he hurt
you?
A: As I said about Sarah Palin and Tina Fey on
“Saturday Night Live,” it’s difficult to satirize
what’s already satiric. It’s so beyond not being
funny, it’s so really wrong at times, in a way
morally inept. You have to wonder, wow, how
did I end up standing onstage at times having
to be the adult in this situation? You’ve turned
me, the comic, into the adult. I’m not supposed
to be the adult, the comic is the child.
Wow, you’ve got me riled up.
Q: Were you always angry?
A: Well, I always had a bit of anger, mostly
sarcastic, but anger would kind of come to
play at times. But you’ve got to realize, my
family was born and raised Jewish. There was
a lot of yelling. And my mother is still around
and still yells about stuff at 102, so I always
thought that anger was a form of love.
Q: That’s a good T-shirt.... I’m of the Jewish
faith as well, and I grew up in a home of loud
voices. My wife and I, it’s really hard for us
sometimes because we’re in the house and we
have the kids, and sometimes people just go
haywire. But she feels uncomfortable, like the
neighbors are going to hear. And I’m like,
“This is how normal life goes.” And there’s
something peaceful about getting it all out
with a good argument.
A: Well, there is. And realizing that the yelling
is not about the other person. That you love
the other person so much that you’re yelling at
them, that you’re telling them, “You know, I
can yell at you because I care about you, and
hopefully you understand that I’m not
attacking you.”
Q: When did you first tap into this anger as
performance and knew it worked for you?
A: Early on, I started doing standup on the
side as a kind of a hobby, and a lot of my early
stuff was stories that were funny — about my
sex life or my gym teacher teaching the health
class. They were funny stories about things
that had happened to me. And then as I
started doing more, I would write a lot of it,
and it had to do with being able to get
something out there. I don’t consider myself a
political comic as much as a social
commentator or a satirist, if you will.
Especially when I arrived in New York, the
evolution began. I ran this room in the city
with some friends, and we’d do a free show on
Saturday nights at midnight. The whole week
before, I’d rip stuff out of the newspapers that
just irritated me, things that I thought were
crazy, and I would go onstage and just pick the
things up and yell.... A friend of mine said
one night when I was performing, “You know,
you’re really angry. You should just go up there
and yell the entire act and see what happens.”
And it was life-changing because I’m funniest
when I’m angry.
[email protected]
Q&A
Comedian Black
is tired of always
being the grown-up
THE WASHINGTON POSTBY JOSE SOLÍST
here are moments in “Voyeur: The
Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec” in
which — as if through artistic
transmutation — New York’s West
Village is transformed into the
Parisian neighborhood of Montmartre. The
site-specific spectacle, conceived by Mara
Lieberman of Bated Breath Theatre Compa-
ny, turns the life of the French artist into an
impressionistic tale told in vignettes from
storefronts and public spaces.
Bated Breath specializes in theater outside
a theater. Before the pandemic, Lieberman,
the troupe’s executive artistic director, had
celebrated 100 performances of the immer-
sive “Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec,” which
took place in a lounge. During lockdown,
Lieberman became dissatisfied with Zoom
plays and other digital offerings. “We
couldn’t just say live performance was dead,”
she says.
A conversation with her sister, a painter
who has designed window displays, inspired
the ideal live show for this era: Performers
and audience members would wear masks
and be protected by glass, altitude or dis-
tance. Lieberman says she wanted to take the
audience on a journey, paying tribute to the
city before the pandemic. “One year ago we
didn’t know being in a room together singing
and dancing could cost people their lives,”
she says. “It was our Belle Epoque.”
One scene in “Voyeur,” which runs through
Jan. 10, features prostitute characters inbright gowns executing leg extensions from a
building’s second and third floors, as cross-
bar window frames protect their modesty.
Although their intended audience is a group
of never more than eight ticket buyers across
the street, such a sight can draw attention
from passersby. The choreographer, Leila
Mire, who also performs in this scene, recalls
running up and down the building’s stairs
during rehearsals to visualize her steps. One
day, Mire says, she noticed several drag
queens nearby, who cheered or nayed her
changes. She followed their advice. “I feel like
I should credit them, but I don’t even know
who they were,” she says.
Mire choreographed most of the scenes in
“Voyeur,” subverting 19th-century dance
through theories of embodiment and objecti-
fication. The women Toulouse-Lautrec paint-
ed step out of the paintings to the surprise of
the painter, conceived as an expressive pup-
pet designed by James Ortiz and worked by
company member Ryan Lisa.
During the show’s most delightful set
piece, an unassuming storefront reveals a
pink boudoir where dancer Natasha Frater is
wearing a mask. She turns seductively and
walks toward the glass, inspecting her callers.
“You’re seeing me, but you can’t touch me,”
Frater says, “which is very empowering.” We
soon realize that her tantalizing reveal will be
what’s under her mask.
For this peculiar striptease, Mire used
movement vocabulary from Middle Eastern
dance, which demanded that she use her
body in unfamiliar ways. “In the beginning, Ifound myself truly wanting to move my whole
body,” she says, but instead learned how to
dance with her gaze. “These women were able
to use their sexuality and their physical form
artistically to allow themselves to be seen and
heard.”
This scene embodies the paradox of “Voy-
eur”: Although we are conscious of the masks
and distancing, there are flashes of pure
escapism. “When I am in the performance
itself,” Frater says, “I am able to lose myself at
times.”
For Ryan Lisa, this isn’t always the case,
“I’m wearing two masks,” the actor says with
a l augh. Ryan Lisa and the Toulouse-Lautrec
puppet appear in the final set piece inside
Judson Memorial Church, where the artist
meets his maker by entering one of his own
paintings. (Because this takes place indoors,
audience members are given the option to
stay outside.)
This is also Ryan Lisa’s debut as a puppe-
teer. “People are not drawn to me, because
they can’t see my face,” the performer ex-
plains, “so the puppet becomes a real person.
It blows your mind.”
For the company, Judson Memorial
Church, across from Washington Square
Park, has become the perfect place to process
grief and loss, standing as a silent witness
when the city falls into darkness.
Most nights, Ryan Lisa is the last person to
leave the church, locking the doors and
leaving feeling uplifted — “thinking of the
next time I’m going to do the show.”
[email protected]A trip to Paris without travel
‘Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse-Lautrec’ transforms New York’s West Village into Montmartre
HUNTER CANNING
Performers and audience members wear masks and are protected by glass, altitude or distance during the site-specific spectacle “Voyeur.”