The Onyx Fool was a serial that I created, directed, and performed in, with a mind-bogglingly large and talented cast and crew (30-40 people) that in its totality was every bit as oddball as the project’s creator. It started at 8BC in the fall of 1984, where episodes 1 through 6 ran on a weekly basis. Each episode was performed twice – once on Sunday and once on Wednesday. Just south of Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village, tucked in between shooting galleries and crumbling tenements, 8BC was the fulcrum of the avant-garde performance scene of that era.
Later in 1984 there was a staged reading at the Mark Taper Annex in Los Angeles (with a cast of local LA actors) and there was a consolidated performance of episodes 7-9 at the Courtyard Playhouse. A 2 part condensed version was presented in 1985 at the Nameless Theater in 1985 under the Title Danger’s Back/Is Danger Finished. In the summer of 2016, original art (a painting I did for posters), photographs, slides used for rear projections, scripts and other emphemera from my performance piece the Onyx Fool were added to the permanent collection of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Although I have been in a few in a couple of exhibits at museums, I was never in a collection before, so it was kind of a thrill. There photos contain of about a quarter of the wonderful cast. The black and white photos are by Lynne Kanter. The color photo (from 30 years later) is of Mary Savig, Smithsonian curator, holding up an original poster that is now in their collection.
The Onyx Fool was a serial that I created, directed, and performed in, with a mind-bogglingly large and talented cast and crew (30-40 people) that in its totality was every bit as oddball as the project’s creator. It started at 8BC in the fall of 1984, where episodes 1 through 6 ran on a weekly basis. Each episode was performed twice – once on Sunday and once on Wednesday. Just south of Tompkins Square Park, in the East Village, tucked in between shooting galleries and crumbling tenements, 8BC was the fulcrum of the avant-garde performance scene of that era.
Later in 1984 there was a staged reading at the Mark Taper Annex in Los Angeles (with a cast of local LA actors) and there was a consolidated performance of episodes 7-9 at the Courtyard Playhouse. A 2 part condensed version was presented in 1985 at the Nameless Theater in 1985 under the Title Danger’s Back/Is Danger Finished. In the summer of 2016, original art (a painting I did for posters), photographs, slides used for rear projections, scripts and other emphemera from my performance piece the Onyx Fool were added to the permanent collection of the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Although I have been in a few in a couple of exhibits at museums, I was never in a collection before, so it was kind of a thrill. There photos contain of about a quarter of the wonderful cast. They are by Lynne Kanter. The color photo (from 30 years later) is of Mary Savig, Smithsonian curator, holding up an original poster that is now in their collection.