Theater and the Porn Sindustry
Waaay back in January, Kendra and I went to see a reading of my friend Victoria Stewart's play "Live Girls." Directed by Jeremy Johnson at the Market Theater in Cambridge, the reading was done by Carol Parker (in the role of Sarah Brown, a performance artist researching her next piece), Marin Ireland (Sonia Ridge, an erotic performer), Kate Fitz Kelly (Allison, Sarah's assistant), and Dale Place (male voice). "Live Girls" is set in a hotel room during an interview with an erotic performer, as well as on a stage during a performance of the piece that developed out of that interview. Largely, the play is an analysis of the motivations to perform erotically, but the play is also about the interview process and the dramatic elements inherent in an interview. I interviewed Victoria via email.

What was the original idea and concept behind Live Girls?

Originally the play was the interview between Sarah Brown and Sonia Ridge and the performance that Sarah creates from the interview. As I worked on the play, I started to add more development behind the scenes, especially because people were very interested in the relationship between Allison the assistant and Sarah Brown, the performance artist.

How do the relationships between Sarah and Sonia -- and Sarah and Allison -- compare? Do you think there are any parallels in terms of their methods and motivations?

I think the similiarities are the issues of exploitation. Sarah, without realizing it (or thinks that it's OK to do so), exploits Sonia in a similar way that she exploits Allison. Everything is the means to her end, and Sarah feels justified. Both Allison and Sonia get theirs back in different ways. Both violate her personally for injustices she has perpetrated on them. I think their betrayals are more serious -- understandable but more vicious. Sarah, a woman who doesn't trust anybody, makes the mistake of trusting them both, not realizing the magnitude of their resentment.

Were you inspired by any particular experience, book, or news item in particular?

The concept originated when I was working for Anna Deveare Smith, who is a political performance artist who uses interviews as her source material. I do want to take pains to say that the character is not Anna -- I have used no personal information gained from dealing with her. But I was very influenced by the interview process in general, something that we as an audience take as reality, but in fact, in many ways, it is a performance.

Interview as performance? Do you think interviewers and interviewees adopt roles during the interview itself? How do you think that happens?

Certainly, when you watch someone who knows how to interview, you see a performance. They lean their bodies in or back in a specific way that's meant to get a certain reaction. Often they lean back to say, "You tell me." There's definitely a setting of the scene. The chairs are set up in a specific alignment. They ask the same questions to start off and break the ice, and then they improvise. They're not themselves. They are a blank wall. It's not a conversation.

The interviewed is trying to be the wittiest, most glorious side of herself. (Or in Sonia's case, she shows up with a political story -- her victimization by the police -- because that's what she thinks Sarah wants to hear.) People always tell the same stories because they know they tell them well. But what I was interested in was how Sarah peels away the layers of Sonia to make her tell something that she doesn't tell people -- about her father's murder of her mother.

I think people fall into roles in an interview because of what they want.The interviewer wants a good story. How can they set the person at ease to get the best story? The interviewed wants to be immortalized in the right way. For instance, right now I'm trying to sound erudite -- whereas if you and I were sitting in a bar, I wouldn't think about trying to sound smart. I would just mouth off.

But let me get back to the play's inspiration. One night while working for Anna, i was watching Howard Stern as he interviewed a porn star whose father shot her mother before he killed himself. The two images merged. Porn as real sex vs. reality-based theater and the way one is denigrated by liberals while one is put on a pedestal by the same group of well-educated people.

What parallels do you see between porn as performance and reality-based theater as performance? Why do you think one is elevated and the other is denigrated?

A huge amount of the draw of reality-based theater, especially confessional theater i.e. "This happened to me: this rape, this injustice," is that an audience says, "That really happened. Wow." If it were in a play, if it were fiction, people would say it was unbelievable. But it's real. So it gets more attention and credibility. (Even though seeing a fictional play may be ultimately more satisfying.)

Porn is the same way. Those people are really having sex. (But is porn actually sexier than good fiction?) Porn is great as a metaphor because even though people are really having sex, you can see in the film that it's a job -- the clock is ticking. The connection between art and exploitation is very apparent in porn.

But porn gets a bad name because bad things happen to people involved in it. Doing the research, I read a lot of porn actors defending it, but in general they seemed like scarred survivors. They were drawn to it because of something really deep inside them, and this was how they found solace in some way. Certainly, theater has that same draw. You don't make a lot of money. The hours are long. But you work outside of the "normal world." In fact, most theater people (and porn stars) just can't work in the normal world. It drives them around the bend.

Also, porn is pretty misognynistic. There's a line in the play that is actually a quote from a porn producer: "Men want to come on the faces of women who reject them." But hey, theater is misogynistic, too.

Lastly, there is the sense that one woman shows are often "reality based." For some reason, we don't take women seriously unless they have someone's else's words (or their own tales of victimization) behind them. That was just floated by a feminist professor here when we talked about the play, but I don't know.

How did you research the topic and industry?

There are a lot of great books about porn. The two the influenced me most were "Coming Attractions" and "A Woman's Right to Pornography" -- especially interviews in both books with Nina Hartley, who is one of the Erotic Eleven, the group of porn stars found guilty of pandering and felony lesbianism, which is the event that Sonia has come to talk about.

Tell me more about felony lesbianism. I'm not familiar with that.

I don't know much about it, to be honest. But that's the actual charge in the Erotic Eleven case -- that it's a federal crime to be a lesbian? Or to be a lesbian in public? It could be an old law that didn't get taken off the books.

In terms of interview-based theater, I was influenced by Anna's book, "Talk To Me," but also the play "The Laramie Project," Moises Kaufman's play about the Matthew Shepard murder and the Vagina Monologues. In general, reality TV was getting hot and heavy at the same time, so every week in the New York Times there was another
article about reality-based art.

Was there a particular message you were trying to convey with the play?

This is the first time I've tried to explain the theme of the play so I may be inarticulate. I think I wanted to question the prevalence of reality-based theater -- why do we as an audience buy into it without questioning the agenda? Obviously, a lot of reality-based work has been heavily manipulated by the author, thus making it artifice. Yet we buy it as truth. For me, the play is also about selling a performance and what happens when money enters art. Even the most noble enterprise is exploitative when money enters the picture and an artist makes money off of someone else's words. (Not like they are getting rich or anything, but there is the sense that because their art is good for us, it's OK that they get the copyright and the royalties.) On an elemental basis, I feel we "get off" on the reality on some level. We like the voyeurism of "This is real," not unlike the way we get off on the reality of porn, that sex is really happening. What happens when it is exposed as artifice -- does it lose its impact?

Do you think this is also true for monologists such as Spalding Grey?

I do think so. I love Spalding Gray, but a huge amount of the humor is that you think, "You really did that?" He, as far as I know, doesn't disavow his work as a character. I've only seen two of his pieces, and they seem to be about him. That's a part of what makes them work. He also happens to be a great writer. So is Anna. Eve Ensler, I'm not sold on. And you know a huge amount of the Vagina Monologues is this sense of "Wow! Women really talked about their vaginas like that?" Well, no. They didn't. Eve Ensler changed their words a lot. But I think she actually doesn't make a lot of money off of the Vagina Monologues -- she gives away the royalties, lets schools do it for free, etc.

The pull of reality is still there.