MIKE KUCHAR’s THE SECRET OF WENDEL SAMSON + JACK SMITH’s NORMAL LOVE
Despite it all! Yes, in the very midst of our national horror-scape, OC has decided to open its doors, for its 40th season! And join up with good ol’ cupid for a Valentines evening dedicated to the redemptive values of LOVE – both its erotic pleasures and its attendant psychological complexity/problems. In fact, we’ll have a pair of legendary 60’s rarities and arguably a veritable prince of Camp in the person of underground icon Mike Kuchar with his oh so prescient Wendel Samson! Pop Artist Red Grooms stars in this larger-than-life and oh-so-lurid melodrama that sees Groomsgrappling with sexual identity issues in this low budget but wildly inventive mise-en-scenographyof this half-hour underground masterpiece, way ahead of its time! CO-BILLED is Jack Smith‘s very rarely screened Normal Love starring Mario Montez and a giggling gaggle of 1963 Downtown Manhattan queers, here set loose in the “Nature of a Connecticut Woodside”… to tease, cavort, and combine be-wigged bodies in every which way in a quite/rather long plot- and language-less parade of early gay gestural play. Smith‘s Flaming Creatures had provoked theater closures and court cases a year before, tho this ethical proto-Warholian pillow-party can be understood as another enactment of this visionary outsider aesthetic, formally marginalized but here unashamed and indeed celebratory despite its rock-bottom budget and production values. Free champagne. $11
