Adrienne Truscott's Provocative Performance "Masterclass" at Bard College
"A skewering of the patriarchal performing world and, in turn, the greater world around it."
"I’ve just always found it hilarious, getting naked on stage,” says actor, writer, dancer, choreographer, comedian, director, and educator Adrienne Truscott, who’s well known in the avant-theatrical/cabaret world as one half of the radically risqué feminist burlesque duo the Wau Wau Sisters and for her other nudity-forward performance work. “When I was really little I’d put shows together and put them on in the living room for my parents, and they usually ended with me getting naked. [Laughs.] It was the ’70s and streaking was a big thing, which I just thought was so funny.” Reliably radical and funny—but perhaps defying some expectations about Truscott by not featuring nudity—is “Masterclass,” her uproarious new collaboration with Feidlim Cannon of Irish theater company Brokentalkers that comes to Bard College this month.
Divine Comedy
The child of an American professor whose curriculum focused on the works of Dante, and an English mother, Truscott lived most of her childhood in her mom’s homeland following her parents’ divorce when she was seven. She also spent some of her youth in the Atlantic City area, a locale that further fueled her carny and circus obsessions. “Oh yeah, I loved the boardwalk and that whole atmosphere there,” she recalls. “At home I loved watching ‘Sonny & Cher’ on TV. I loved people like Carol Burnett, Carol Channing, and Lily Tomlin."
There was a physicality to their kind of comedy, it was very goofy, but it was smart. When we got HBO, I loved Whoopi Goldberg and Eddie Murphy. And for some reason I really loved Alan Alda. [Laughs.] But even though I’d done those little shows at home when I was younger and I’d wanted to be a gymnast, I was still pretty shy about performing outside of that and about the idea of trying to make other people laugh. But I ingested all of this stuff by these comedians I saw on TV, and that made me think, ‘Hey, I could tell a joke!’”
After studying dance at Wesleyan College, Truscott made her way to New York City with the aim of becoming a professional dancer and choreographer. “When I got out of college, I still had more of a desire to make art rather than perform it,” she recalls. “I was thinking about the new forms that I was encountering and what excited me about them, ways to attack and subvert things.” It was the 1990s and the city was subversion central when it came to edgy art and performance. The buzzing, pre-Brooklyn-shift arts scene that exploded with Warhol’s 1960s work had continued through the ’70s and ’80s and was very much still alive. Nexuses like the venerated, ongoing alternative art center the Kitchen (where Truscott worked as house manager), CBGB’s Gallery, and the Pyramid Club pulsated with music, drag shows, cabaret, and performance art by acts like Blacklips Performance Cult (featuring a young Anhoni of Antony and the Johnsons), Kiki and Herb (with Justin Vivian Bond), and others.
In "Masterclass," Truscott plays a the self-mythologizing male artist and Cannon is a sycophantic interviewer. Photo credit Ste Murray.
Naked Truth
It was in this milieu that Truscott met circus artist Tanya Gagne. With their shared, irreverent, button-pushing sensibility, the two hit it off instantly and began lighting up neo-burlesque nights in Manhattan and the then-new frontier of Williamsburg as the Wau Wau Sisters. “We were always writing songs to sing and coming up with crazy costumes and routines,” Truscott says. “We both found a lot of bravery in each other with the stuff we’d try. It was, like, ‘Well, if she’ll do it, then I’ll do it!’” Out of the Wau Waus’ boundary-busting symbiosis came their fearless leap into their frequently appearing on stage in the altogether. “[Nude performance] isn’t something I always chose to do, really,” says the artist. “But, like I said, I do think it’s hilarious—it’s cheap, it’s fun, and it sells tickets. [Laughs.] And I think there is a power that comes from being comfortable with being naked on stage. The best times after a performance are when someone from the audience comes up to me and says, ‘I was laughing so hard at what you were doing up there that I forgot you were naked.’ That’s, like, ‘Haha, yes! We did it!’ I’m dedicated to liberating all bodies, and I’ve been happy to do my part for that—while knowing that as a cis white woman, I can get away with more and I have a higher level of safety than a woman from a more marginalized background might.”
The Wau Wau Sisters took their act on the road, becoming the glittery toast of festivals in Europe, Australia, and the UK (in 2013 the pair won the prestigious Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival) with their notoriously bawdy shenanigans, which have frequently involved the participation of unwitting subjects from the audience. Such was the scene when the duo performed for the 2006 inaugural season of the Spiegeltent at Bard College’s SummerScape festival, where their uproarious antics fit right in with the venue’s carny vibe and saw them become returning favorites. But outside of the Wau Wau’s, Truscott was making waves of her own.
Solo Sister
Truscott has authored several collaborative performance works that combine surrealist theater with choreography. These include 2005’s “They Will Use the Highways” and 2007’s “Genesis, No!,” both of which have costarred “Hadestown” choreographer David Neumann and Truscott’s partner, Carmine Covelli, the drummer of dance punk band the Julie Ruin; 2011’s “HA! A Solo”; 2012’s “Too Freedom”; and 2017’s “Wild Bore,” a piece that costarred Zoe Coombs Marr and Ursula Martinez, and in a kind of meta move that’s a bit of a Truscott trademark, poked fun at the theater sphere itself, casting the actors as, literally, ass-headed theater critics.
There have also been her solo shows, like 2015’s stand-up comedy piece “Adrienne Truscott’s A One-Trick Pony (Or Andy Kaufman is A Feminist Performance Artist and I’m A Comedian),” which she performed to raves abroad and in truncated form at the Whitney Museum of Art, and the ongoing, ever-evolving “THIS,” which she debuted in 2017 and still tours. Most confrontational and controversial, though, was “Adrienne Truscott’s Asking for It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else!,” which won multiple awards in the UK when it premiered there in 2013. With Truscott portraying a stylized “blonde bimbo” character and dressed only from the waist up, the provocative, no-holds-barred show took on the taboo topic of rape and the brazen, unapologetic jokes that have been made about it by male comedians. “Truscott lambasted all aspects of misogyny,” wrote Newsweek. “[including] the idea that a gussied-up woman is asking for it, street harassment, and the notion that there’s any such thing as ‘gray area’ when it comes to rape, which if nothing else, is ‘really rude.’” When “Asking for It” premiered in Australia, Truscott met a new collaborator.
Feidlim Cannon is co-artistic director of the internationally renowned Irish theater company Brokentalkers. Photo credit Ste Murray.
Class in Session
“In 2015, amidst the vibrant atmosphere of the Sydney Festival, I had the serendipitous pleasure of meeting Adrienne,” says Feidlim Cannon. “We were both presenting shows there that year, and our mutual admiration for each other’s work led to an impromptu, spirited conversation at the festival bar. We quickly discovered a shared passion for innovative storytelling, collaborative processes, and a similar sense of humor. Adrienne has stood out as such an important artistic voice today. Her bravery, dynamism, and consistently thought-provoking work not only challenge norms, but also elevate those who collaborate with her. I know that for a fact.”
“Masterclass,” the product of this serendipitous partnership between the self-described “fed-up feminist” and “all-around good guy,” is another skewering of the patriarchal performing world and, in turn, the greater world around it. The play, which opened in Edinburgh in 2022, savages the macho mythology of the male literary figure (think Mailer or Hemingway), with Truscott in the role of a mustachioed, self-important playwright and Cannon as a sycophantic, myth-fueling interviewer. “It’s tight and it runs about an hour,” says Truscott when asked to describe the show, which she says is satirical. “It’s really funny and the costumes are really funny, too, but in a way, it’s similar to the style of something that someone like Mamet or Neil LaBute would write, because it has a real economy of language.”
Away from “Masterclass,” Truscott, who has lived with Covelli in Tivoli since 2009, has and continues to teach class herself. As a visiting artist or adjunct faculty member she has been an educator at Wesleyan, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, Barnard, and Bard, where she currently coordinates an MA program in Human Rights and the Arts and this summer will emcee the events at the Spiegeltent for the second consecutive year.
“I still love it, what can happen between the performer and the audience when you create a really radical space,” says Truscott when asked what keeps her constantly returning to the stage. “In an increasingly flat-screen world, I think that’s something we need now more than ever. I’m still excited by the possibilities.”
“Masterclass” will run April 3-6 at the Luma Theater of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Tickets are $40. April 3 at 7:30pm, April 4 at 7:30pm, April 5 at 2pm, April 5 at 7:30pm, and April 6 at 3pm.
