Manifesto?

 I.

Carpe diem!  Seize the day! Seizing it our way!  What the fuck do we have to lose? Balls out we bring it to the stage.  All the shit we think about, are close to, have been touched and troubled by gets dickwhipped in our process circles. That’s where we create what you see before you- that’s how we make sense of the world. Art- our life. We seize the day ‘cause tomorrow we’ll be gone like the homeless elbowed out of skid row (of all places!)  by expansionism, gentrification and the mantra: “if we build on top of that mess then no one will ever know it was there”. Dolla! Dolla! Bills ya’ll! Gone! Like yesterday’s hood-fame act. Gone!  Like a dead-beat dad. Gone! Like the fourth member? And who will remember?

II.

We remember. What once existed and what scarred us with its absence.  The lack of female masculine role models is my phantom limb. The craving for connection – constant need for validation lands one in painful positions, huh? It distorts you, turns you into a crazy curious character navigating through queerness (or what eva’) in bars diluting fears and insecurities with dollar specials, fading memories with lung swelling hits to the head. Throwing chingazos at each other and oneself, getting into debt but still not enough to buy enough time to make everything right.  I won’t go quietly and fill another role. The only Ugly Tia role I’ll play is one I write! Ya Basta to awful hair! And incase no one's ever said this to you...just worry about being you.  I had to find reasons to feel good about myself. I came together with the BdP- pulled myself together to gender fuck, not give a fuck and make sense of the mess that held my spirit down tight, tighter than electrical tape on tender-boi-tits.

III.

Seize and discard! Those masks used to conceal true selves; it’s not worth living with your back against the wall. Take control; make the calls in your life. No one should cash their dreams out on you. Search for something completely different. We’ve stepped into our post heroic masculinities. Ditched the pedestal pimping mentality and got hooked on the process of processing and transgressing our layered-self’s to reach self love. Can’t be what I’m not and won’t try to be who you think I should be. I gotta speak the pain not wallow in it. There’s no time! We aint got time and don’t want to wait for the moment. So we make every life/performance/life a moment. This is a moment. There I go again dishing out these crazy-mixed-up metaphors who knows we may create a masterpiece or just a feeling that haunts you. So, see us for what we are. Can you? Oh, you think you can?

IV.

This trio was once a quartet. Circumstances brought the four together but sometimes it’s the break ups that help you see the real shit before your eyes. Remember the past for what it was but always keep your eyes on to be. Yup, this trio goes back to last century, sometime  before our first exhibitionist  act on stage. Mmm. Mmm. Ahhh. Ahh. But we've got more shit than years between us. This thing is personal. The way writing collaborating and performing together is personal. You can’t do it with just anybody! We got more shit than years between us. We are poets, storytellers to whom much has been given and we know much is required. I’m not just quoting scripture here- this is our attitude.  We feel gifted so we gift you our art.  

p.s. Isn't this an awesome poster? The pic was taken by Mr. Hector Silva and the design- a Tricky Troll (Raquel Gutierrez) creation of course. 

Repost the show blog?

Note:  I suggest you read my first entry- posted on my myspace page myspace.com/claudiadebdp so that this entry makes some sense to you

My friend and BdP supporter extraordinare and future film critique Party Ahn asked me on Friday, premier night of Dickwhipped show, during our Q&A session, what it felt like to work with video.  It was a great question especially coming from someone who works and has a deep interest in that medium. Honestly, our time and minds have been so wrapped around the production of the show that I don’t think I had a chance to process the whole experience of producing the work to give her an answer I felt good with.  In other words I hadn’t had the distance from the work to think about how it was for me to take part in its creation. But  I feel like I’ve had time and so here goes- this is how the experience felt.  It was beautiful.  As a writer I anchor myself- my art in words sometimes more securely than other but that’s what I do.  I almost cherry-pick each work to make sure that what I’m writing sounds like what I hear and see in my mind and is palpable to the audiences’ mind. Words. A picture paints a thousand words but how many pictures can you use to tell a story.  Sounds too obvious perhaps, it was a trippy experience for me.  I’m used to creating images through narrative not so much creating narratives with images.   The inverse of my comfort zone. That’s what  “Fuck, Love: a love story with no words,” was like.  When Mari and I started off we had an idea in mind for a storyline but in the end the pictures had their own agenda. 

  

I also wrote my first script, another first for me.  I adapted one of Raquel Gutierrez' narrative pieces ("Waterboy") into a script called “Metamorphis”. Marie Gaerlan got in the director's chair and cranked out a 5.09 minute short with the incredible support and talent of and Morgan Dye.

The Script

This piece is a butched out version of Marie Shelly’s story of Frankenstein portrayed by Mama Dragga as Dr. Frankenstein. While both Frankenstein and Mama Dragga are in search of creating life, both trying to find meanings to give life purpose, Mama Draga’s goal is to create the ultimate butch.  Masculinity being perfected, created and molded in the strong, delicated big hands of a drag queen. Mama Draga is not a typical mad scientists/adventurer she is a bruja with shaman-esque powers who through séance-like rituals is able to draw the most “desirable” attributes from two butch corpses that lay before her and transfers the attributes to a third corpse- her creation… the ultimate butch.

Int.  Mama Draga’s Séance Room - Night

 

A high SHOT of Mama Draga’s room features the 3 bodies laying on operating tables covered neck down with sheets, Mama Draga mixes concoctions, pulls herbs out of her satchel and burns sage.

 

Mama Draga

(still busy setting up)

 

Why is it that the handsome and the

courageous are always handling the

ball and calling the plays? How do

the worthy and the scandalous charm

their way through the endzone so effortlessly, these machos so full of grace!

 

She turns and walks over to Butch 1, grabs Butch 1's face endearingly.

 

I’m most impressed that she was able to make something out of it.  I wrote the shots the way I saw them in my mind and then Marie managed to “stage” them for lack of a better term and Morgan captured and made it look like something I hadn’t imagined. It was a good collaboration working with that group.  I thought that this type of collaboration was interesting and fun. Some of you saw “Metamorphis” and perhaps didn’t get it. I say SO WHAT! Just enjoy the delectable colors on the screen. And wasn’t Plastinlina (aka Mamma Dragga whose real name is Isaac Prado) HOT? Yes! Hot enough to have three-3 fine butches offer to buy her lunch all in one day. Plastilina has a great voice and is also a talented make-up artists and designer.  We first met when BdP did a show back in September 07 at Highways New Latino Arts Festival. We all felt it, there was chemistry from the start, such good energy. So good that the simple act of Plastilina fastening my lush-lashes as we transformed me into (Roundkeeper (aka King Bitch aka Pat Benatar IMPERSONATOR) was enough to make my butt-hole go "tee-hee". That’s how it started she was my Mamma Draga that day. Which leads me to another question that we’re often asked, “Where do your ideas come from,” from everywhere…including chemistry. If you guys didn't catch the show, pues ni modo hasta la next time. Not sure when's the next time we'll be doing Dickwhipped in LA but we're coming to the Bay, La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley to be exact on February 9th hope our Bay area supporters come to play with us.