Stage Notes: The Jackie Look

Premiere performance artist Karen Finley's shows are not to be missed.  She delights you.  She assails you.  No matter what, she is going to be tossing verbal darts, hurling emotional cannonballs, and, in general, wrecking the joint.  No one falls asleep at her shows, and no one leaves without having a very strong opinion, one way or the other, about what she has to say.  This solo show, The Jackie Look, is Karen assuming the role of Jackie Kennedy, giving a lecture about the ways she has been photographed, viewed and considered in her life.  She also brings Jackie into the present, where she will have something to say about Michelle Obama's arms, Caroline Kennedy's run for the Senate, and Michael Jackson, whose book she edited.
 
Hi Karen.  How did this show come about?
I was asked to give a talk in Dallas for the Society for Photographic Education, and I started thinking about Dallas, and its place in history in relation to Jackie.  And I thought about the new administration and how we look at our presidents and First Ladies; iconic imagery.
 
O.K.
And then I started thinking -- at the same time -- about Obama, when he made his acceptance speech in Chicago at Grant Park, the same place the protesters were camped during the '68 Democratic convention.  And I thought about the transformation of memory and image, and the transference of emotions and memories.  And I felt that there was a release of the emotions attached to that time, when Obama made his speech. I realized my emotional reaction to Grant Park had changed.  Previously it was the memories of the violence in '68.  That's the point: you can move on to a new memory, a future.  And I thought of the '60s, and the image of Jackie Kennedy and the Kennedy family images in pictures.  So the performance is about looking at the images of the trauma and style from the Kennedys.
 
So you are going to play Jackie?
Jackie is the performer.  It's a one person lecture that Jackie gives, where she is speaking of her images, and pictures of her, and she's asking the public to relieve her from their gaze.  It's time to move on; we don't need these images of trauma.  I have Jackie going to the JFK website and looking at the Grassy Knoll Book Depository, which is a museum now, and she looks at those pictures and thinks about it.  We don't think about it, how a person's public pain is made into a museum.
 
Is the text changing?
I did it once as a talk.  I showed the You Tube homage to Jackie.  So that's dealing with the subject matter on another level.  There's no privacy anymore, and people feel so close to public figures.  And the public figure must come to terms with the loss of privacy and dealing with celebrity.  We all know that.  All their privacies are public now.  We're all, in some way, famous now.  We all have that dilemma.
 
Any final thoughts?
It's serious, but it does have its funny moments.  It's intense.  I do perform dressed as Jackie.  It's The Jackie Look.
 
The Laurie Beechman Theater at The West Bank Café, 407 W. 42nd St. (west of Ninth Ave.), (212) 352-3101. Jan. 30-Mar. 6, Saturdays only, 7:30 p.m. $20, plus $15 food or drink.