New York's mistress of performance art connects with 'Happiness'

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Laurie Anderson's "Happiness" 8 p.m. Saturday Leeward Community College Theatre $35 ($25 students, seniors and military) 455-0385

Laurie Anderson, that is. Performance artist extraordinaire. Singer-songwriter. Film director. Multimedia whiz before anybody knew what the heck multimedia really was. That Laurie Anderson.

It's not that Anderson was rude, mind you. Not in the least. On the other end of a long-distance connection to Los Angeles, Anderson was, in fact, polite to a fault, too-cool-for-schoolteacher sweet and an absolute joy to listen to. She simply seemed to have a lot on her mind.

Perhaps that was because time was closing in on the Honolulu performance of her latest solo theatre piece, "Happiness," tomorrow at Leeward Community College Theatre. At least that's what I wanted to think.

A single question ... any question ... seemed to set her off into entirely new realms of off-the-subject conversation that she was only too happy to riff on until there was no more left to say.

And so we talked about "Happiness," a minimalist (at least when compared to the arty Anderson's aurally- and visually-intense multimedia manifestos) feast of unusually personal stories culled from the artist's experiences over the past year.

"Happiness" has been described by some critics as the work that finally peels back Anderson's many layers to reveal what she has essentially always been: a storyteller.

"The reaction to ('Happiness') has been really interesting, actually," said Anderson, sounding genuinely surprised that audiences so far had been appreciative of downing their Laurie straight, with no audio-visual chaser. "That's because, well, it's such a simple show, you know. I mean it's really very, very stripped down. There are no pictures. There is music, but it's really very played down. It's stories."

Arguably the most well-known performance artist to emerge from the 1970s New York avant-garde underground, Anderson has received much critical and popular notice for ingeniously blending film, visuals, mime, dance, high doses of technology and whatever struck her creative fancy into her projects. But it's unlikely Anderson's most famous works — including the seven-hour multimedia performance "United States" and the concert film "Home of the Brave" — would have attracted the mainstream attention each did had it not been for the artist's expert mix of lyrical storytelling and voice.

A razor-sharp chronicler of the minutiae of people and places, Anderson's voice is, at once, as friendly and accessible as it is dreamy and distant. Spare of Anderson's usual high-tech accoutrements, "Happiness," perhaps more than anything the artist has done, is said to capitalize on her soothing voice and storytelling abilities.

It has also been called the most personal work of Anderson's career. No surprise, as "Happiness" is essentially about a year in the life of the artist herself.

The work's most direct artistic relative is Anderson's mid-2001 "Life on a String" tour, which found the artist backed by little more than a three-piece band warbling compositions from her 20 year left-of-mainstream oeuvre.

"What I really enjoyed about ("Life") was how much I could improvise," said Anderson. "And in a big show with a lot of tech, you really can't kind of just go off. The technicians are going, 'What page are we on? Wait a second!'" She let loose a throaty laugh.

"And so I wanted to do something where I had, I guess, more contact with people," she continued. "And this is a tour where I'm kind of doing everything. I'm like the roadie and the sound tech. I have a small setup with keyboards and a violin, and some digital processors and stuff. And so I just kind of DJ."

Anderson excused herself to answer a phone ringing in the distance, returning a couple of minutes later armed with apologies.

"But it has been fun to hear what people have to say about it," said Anderson. "That's what I really love about live stuff. I learn a lot from the audience. I think they generally have the idea that they're sort of invisible when I can see them really well. And so, I try to learn from watching their expressions."

Anderson confessed that she had been feeling a need to change her work for some time. She also wanted to mess with her audience's expectations for a new Laurie Anderson piece.

"Expectation is really how this whole thing started," said Anderson. "I started out thinking, 'All right, I'm going to put myself into situations where I really don't know what to say, what to do, how to act and see what happens,' rather than just do the kind of knee-jerk things that I was doing. I knew that I wanted to do something simpler. That was for sure. And I wanted it to be about expectations."

And so early last year, Anderson began placing herself into a handful of situations that were foreign to her with the goal of exploring people, places and her expectations of both. They included an odd court case in which she was a juror. A couple of weeks of living and working on a farm with an Amish family. Two weeks behind the counter at her neighborhood McDonald's. All of it was woven into the fabric of what became "Happiness."

And then midway through her exploration of expectations, something decidedly unexpected happened, a mere 10 blocks from her longtime Manhattan studio and home.

"Sept. 11 changed everything for me," Anderson said, solemnly, the subject still difficult to easily reflect on. "Really ... everything. The thing is, so many of my friends were out on the street when the second plane came down. And that's really different than seeing it from a distance. Greenwich Street was the runway." Anderson, in Chicago at the time, flew home as soon as she could. "I got home at 2 in the morning and walked down to the site before going into my house."

Each day at her studio since has offered a constant reminder of Sept. 11 — dust, trucks running up and down the street and kleig lights 24 hours a day. Anderson couldn't even escape her sadness while in Europe.

"That was really a revelation, because the way Americans are seen there is such a clichŽ," she said. "Basically, the idea was that the American reaction to terrorism was just about money. And that all we cared about were our investments and that we were, like, really scared. It's almost like they need to see us as these really mercenary, kind of heartless ..." Anderson stopped, a bit sad and exasperated. "It was shocking. It was really scary. And I kept saying, 'That's wrong! That's not what it is!' I didn't feel like an ambassador from the United States or anything, but, you know, I was from New York and they were asking me.

"The (attacks) changed things on very mundane levels and very big levels for me, in ways that I'm still really trying to absorb. 'Happiness' is (also), in a sense, a kind of work in progress as I try to struggle with some of that stuff."

Abruptly, I change the subject to McDonald's, as in: Why explore the Golden Arches?

"Well, I was going to just try something like a diner," Anderson explained. "And then I thought, that's, like, really nostalgic. That's too nostalgic. It's too much like a movie or something." Instead, Anderson chose a place where most Americans had noshed and many had punched timecards.

"I had a great time," she insisted. "I really enjoyed the people who I worked with. We were a team. It was completely the opposite of what I thought it was going to be: underpaid, stressed-out people.

"It's such a cliché, you know ... the Happy Meals. But the (McDonald's) that I was in really was that. And I'm such a cynic that I was just shocked to have that experience. And we were good! I saw people that I knew, but they didn't recognize me. You just jump in and do everything ... cash register, stuffing the Happy Meal bags, burgers, fries. I kind of missed it when I left."

After another fit of laughter, Anderson returned to "Happiness."

"I'm very aware that it's pretending stuff," said Anderson. "I was just in these places for a couple of weeks, and it's like, 'What do I really know about them?'" She paused. "But, you know, I know more than I did when I started."

Finished with that subject, Anderson segued giddily into discussing a recent phone call, sounding like a child with a secret that just needed to be let loose.

"I just got this great phone call from NASA," she said, clearly delighted. "I just found out I'm to be the first artist in residence at NASA."

Anderson was told she could work with California scientists studying Mars, spend time with the Hubble telescope crew and even train with astronauts in Houston.

"I thought 'Oh ... my ... God!" she said, barely in control of her excitement. "I don't think they'd even think of letting me go up, but they said that I could do the training. I'm thrilled because I would give anything to go up. Anything."