Venus Rising

ProfileIssue: Sagittarius 08 & Honest Self Expression

Saying It Like It Is

“Kathryn Blume is Al Gore on crack. With red hair. And a uterus.” 

I’ve been called a lot of things in my years as an actor and activist: A quirky Sarah Jessica Parker. A commie pinko. A hopium toker. Adorable.

You’ve got to figure with reactions like that, you must at least be getting someone’s attention. The paradox of doing politically-oriented theater, which also strives to be high quality art, is that you’re trying to get someone’s attention without looking like you are. You’re trying to encourage your audience to be mindful of a relevant issue by telling a story so good, they won’t be consciously aware that you’re trying to teach them something.

Is this a challenge for me? Absolutely. But it is also deeply exciting when the balance is just right. In my work as a solo performer, that means treating the gravest of issues – the Iraq war and global warming - with a comedic hand, but an honest heart. I’ve learned that if you can make people laugh, particularly at your own expense, then you can get away with saying pretty much anything – especially if you’re open and truthful.

The value of creating that kind of space for honesty is that an artist can end up saying something her audience was perhaps thinking, but hadn’t spoken aloud. They might not even have been willing to admit it to themselves.

Kathryn Blume in "The Boycott" officeFor example, in my current show, The Boycott, the farcical story of the First Lady of the U.S. launching a nationwide sex strike to combat global warming, is interwoven with my personal account of writing the show, and struggling with the emotional impact of living on a planet in serious peril. I’ve had many audience members tell me that they feel the same kind of despair and fear for the future of the world that I talk about in my show, but they’ve never expressed it to anyone else. It’s a relief and a lessening of pressure to hear someone else acknowledge those feelings in public.

Kathryn receives message from GandhiI've also discovered the imperative of leaving your audience with a concrete sense of hope and possibility. Intractable as many problems can seem, if you can give someone even a glimmer that the work they need to do will have an impact, give them a sense of a shred of effectiveness, it’s amazing what they can set their passions to and accomplish.

I feel my job is to say to people “Here is the truth of how things are. Now this is how it can be. This is the world we can create and we are capable of making it happen."

I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish with these ideas – nor am I speaking from a place of mere theory. I’ve been convinced of what the arts can achieve since my experience as Co-Founder of the Lysistrata Project. In early 2003, right before the U.S. attacked Iraq, my friend Sharron Bower and I organized over 1000 readings of the ancient Greek anti-war comedy Lysistrata in 59 countries and all 50 U.S. states.