Mayhem and Howl! Happening Present: Manatee in the Moon: An Homage to Luna Macaroona
Mayhem and Howl! Happening Present: Manatee in the Moon: An Homage to Luna Macaroona
Tuesday July 19, 2016 / 2 PM / Free
FULL MOON SHOW
A Tom Murrin Alien Comic Invention
The Full Moon Show, Howl! Happening’s monthly series of performances, rituals, and blessings, features original members of the Full-Moon Crew and other leading contemporary performers. For July, performer/curator Salley May and her sister, artist Nancy May Perry, create Mayhem in the gallery and pay tribute to the moon goddess Luna Macaroona and to Tom Murrin—an artist whose legacy continues today with the young performance artists he encouraged and inspired.
Mayhem is Salley May and Nancy May Perry, who combine shared and separate histories to chart lines between danger/safety, prey/predator, and inside/outside, summoning unconventional forces for protection and power, and identifying survival as a radical act. Mayhem was formed when these two sisters came together for a performance at the New Museum in 2013.
Salley May is Howl! Happening’s Tom Murrin Full Moon series curator, a NYC-based performance artist since 1986. She has curated PS122’s Avant-Garde-Arama series since 1988, and has run theater/dance workshops with mentally ill populations through HAI (Hospital Audiences, Inc.) since 1990. She was a longtime member of Jennifer Miller’s Circus Amok! and is devoted to the life, work and spirit of Tom Murrin aka the Alien Comic.
Visual artist Nancy May Perry explores images of transparency and houses concepts of safety and danger in the mundane of day-to-day experience. She did undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley and received an MFA from Hunter College. Perry has been included in shows at the Brooklyn Art Museum and other venues in New York City.
The Tom Murrin Archive
Howl! Happening is the repository of the Tom Murrin Archive comprising masks, costumes, scripts, correspondence, photographs, and tapes of performances going back to the early 70s. Murrin (February 8, 1939–March 12, 2012) also known as The Alien Comic and Jack Bump, was a performance pioneer whose life and work inspired both artists and audiences for over 40 years. He was a member of the first generation of La MaMa playwrights. Tom wrote four plays performed through La MaMa and produced by John Vacarro’s Play-House of the Ridiculous, including the offbeat hit Cock-Strong, which toured with Ellen Stewart’s La MaMa troupe to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.
With the guidance of rock manager Jane Friedman, Tom began to perform under the name Alien Comic, opening for acclaimed punk bands in rock clubs such as CBGB, Max’s Kansas City and Irving Plaza. He performed in New York City clubs and theaters as The Alien Comic, appearing in such venues as The Pyramid, 8BC, King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, PS122, Dixon Place, La MaMa, and more. Since the mid 80s, he created, performed, and curated a series of variety nights at PS122, and later at the La Mama Experimental Theater Club and Dixon Place, called The Full Moon Show. His plays Sport-Fuckers and Butt-Crack Bingo were produced at Theater for the New City and La MaMa and directed by David Levine.
Photo: Jim R. Moore, 2015