The Dreams of Laura Bush & The Passion of Terri Schiavo

In these two companion performance pieces, internationally acclaimed performance artist Karen Finley brilliantly explores the state of our union in The Dreams of Laura Bush and The Passion of Terri Schiavo. In Dreams, Finley creates an illustrated dream journal of America’s First Lady. And in Passion, Finley’s live action ink drawing becomes the abstracted soul projection of a culture obsessed with saving a life.

The first work performed – The Dreams of Laura Bush – is a reconstructed, first person, illustrated, dream journal of America’s First Lady. Finley performs the narrative of Mrs. Bush as she dreams with a cast of international celebrities and politicians such as Tony Blair and Goldie Hawn, all while creating dream drawings projected as a backdrop. As in all dreams, there is the profound and the mundane, and the applied meaning from a personal and collective understanding. Here, Finley considers the symbolic landscape of the unconscious dream politics of the feminine passive power uncovered with humor and unleashed desire.

In The Passion of Terri Schiavo, a live action ink painting becomes the abstracted soul projection of an American Culture obsessed with saving Terri. Schiavo, a Florida woman who suffered a brain trauma, lapsed into a coma and was pronounced brain dead. She then became an icon for the right to die/and to be kept alive when her husband sued in order to allow her to die and not be kept alive by a feeding tube, and her parents counter sued to keep her body alive. This case became a national narrative of a country obsessed with one woman’s life yet at the same time at war. In this work, the narrative takes the voice from different oppositional positions – both pro and con, family, stranger and society at large. Yet all are passionate in this heart-wrenching, personal life and death issue.

Student Rush Tickets are available at 6:00 PM on Wednesday, January 3 and Thursday, January 4 for $20.00 at the box office.