It only takes one glimpse ofDebbie Taunt to understand the importance
that Sheelah Murthy places on a strong visual image.Taunt is probably Murthy’s
best-known character in Austin performance circles: a 10-foot tall,
sweet-princess socialite in a blue prom dress, white gloves, and striking
blonde wig. As Taunt, Murthy led audiences at last fall’s X/XX Fringe Fest and
a recent Performance Art Church show in a sing-song chant celebrating
conformity before transforming into a raging diva, lip-syncing to a fierce
collision of voice and machines best described as an “electronic aria.” Not all Murthy’s images are so elaborate, but her sense of personal aesthetic
drives even her simplest pieces. Before beginning a performance career in
Austin in 1988, Murphy studied sculpture at the University of Texas. Even then,
through the school’s then-emerging transmedia program, she began exploring
video and installation work as mediums to transfer images from inside her head
to the stage.
Sometimes, the immediate meaning of an image isn’t clear to Murthy. Yet, if
it’s an image she can execute, she has learned, from one of her earliest
performance exper-iences, to trust the image. “In my last semester of school at
UT (in 1988), I dyed my hair blond, to see if I would act differently and be
treated differently,” she says. “I wasn’t attractive as a blonde, but sure
enough, the whole myth of the blonde came into effect, and there was a
difference.”
“I did a piece right after that where I sang `Misty’ and shaved my hair off,”
she continues. “That was the image that came to me, and for the first time in
years, I didn’t have the concept behind it nailed down. People asked me
afterwards if it was a statement about cancer victims or concentration camps,
and I didn’t know. To me, the piece seemed to be about wanting to give, but it
was disturbing when people asked `What are you saying?’ and I didn’t know.”
“A year later, I was in India,” she says, “and I saw all these people in one
city who were going around with shaved heads. I asked the person I was with why
they had done that, and he said they’d just come from a pilgrimage in South
India where they shaved their heads to give their hair to the gods in return
for a boon. And then the piece I did made sense to me. The image had been given
to me and then revealed to me later. That’s when I realized it was right to go
ahead and trust the image.”
Murthy considers her latest version of Selling Shakti (Nagru Rutap),
running this week at Planet Theatre, her most visually elaborate show to date.
She is designing a set which “can stand alone as an installation” and is adding
to elements she implemented when she premiered Shakti last November at
noted New York performance space P.S. 122. In that show, hair played a major
role: A web of hair was woven into a film screen at the back of the space.
Three holes were cut into the screen, one for each of the three characters
Murthy portrayed.
There are higher-tech representations of hair in the works for this show.
Drawing on her experience as a singer and instrument builder in the local
avant-electronic band Liquid Mice, Murthy is making wigs, with tape recorders
and speakers fitted inside, that will be suspended over the audience. In order
to symbolize the “babbling inside your head,” there will be varying levels of
clarity and garble in each one. Audience members will get different
perspectives depending on where they sit.
Murthy sees the hair as “a personal icon” that represents “trying to adapt to
another system’s aesthetic or value when it is imposed on you.” For Murthy, who
is half Filipina and half East Indian, that adaptation is a reminder of the
search for identity and quest for a homeland which not only centers
Shakti, but her other works and even her day-to-day life.
Shakti also presents her queries about the commodification of
spirituality. Her con-cerns spring from her idea that making a commodity of
anything causes it to “lose a sense of power and meaning,” but she also has a
personal interest in Shakti, considered in Hinduism as “the feminine principle
in the universe which moves the cosmos.”
Much of the piece derives from personal experience; Murthy calls it
“anthology.” Yet it is not so much proclamatory as thought-provoking. “I’m less
interested in giving answers than posing questions,” she says.
The work’s three characters represent different aspects of Murthy’s
personality. There’s the Vegas Voodoo Priestess, characterized by Murthy as a
“sexy Vegas car salesman;” the Queen from Ipanema, an overeducated,
chain-smoking complainer with unevolved, disabling anger; and Debbie Taunt, the
“bitch behind Doris Day” who breaks from her pretty shell to become an
embodiment of transformative anger.
In the show’s New York version, Murthy performed each character on her own
separate, onstage “island.” This time, she intends to blur them this time,
stripping off layers of clothing as she moves through each persona. That
decision is indicative of a heavier reliance on image than in previous works.
This includes a collaboration with film artist Luke Savisky and videographer
Claudia Sperber. There are points in the show where Murthy will go offstage,
leaving the film or video clips to run alone.
In some respects, Murthy is comfortable and gaining a foothold in the world of
performance art. Earlier this year, she was awarded a graduate fellowship to
study performance at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she will start this
fall, and her next performance of Shakti, if discussions work out, will
be at another noted New York performance space, The Kitchen, sometime during
her first semester.
Yet Murthy is also weary of some aspects of contemporary performance work, and
her decisions for structuring Shakti as a heavily imagistic piece relate
to conversations she’s had with friends over what they see as unsettling
trends.
“We’re tired of the soapbox,” she says. “We’re tired of the performance artist
who has to spill his or her guts on the stage, leaving the audience without a
choice because they paid seven dollars to see it.”
“I’m wondering, isn’t there a way to put the two styles together? To have
beautiful visual poetry and elements of the soapbox, and not have people turn
off one and just get the other.”
Selling Shakti (Nagry Rutap)runs May 18-21 at Planet
Theatre.
This article appears in May 19 • 1995 and May 19 • 1995 (Cover).