Labor Day Weekend, 2010.

Defaced TOPMAN ad. Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn. September, 2010.

I am very pleased to announce that DUELING HARPS is making its debut in New York City October 14-16! (Info below.)

We also need your help!

It costs so much to put on shows like this, and we are flying in and housing three fantastic artists from Los Angeles, including Ann, who has not made a theatrical appearance in NYC since 2001 (and may not be back any time soon!). This is a great way to make sure your tax money is funneled to supporting the arts.
Any amount is appreciated, from $25 to $2,500 – we are trying to raise almost $10,000 just to pay for everything.

Of course the best way to show your support is buying tickets and coming to bear witness, but budgets are a killer.

Every little bit helps. Thank you and have a great last hurrah of summer!
Adam

Dear Friend:

I am writing to you about an exciting show I am a part of called DUELING HARPS.

This show is a collaboration of fantastic artists: actress and singer Ann Magnuson; harpists Alexander Rannie and Mia Theodoratus; puppeteer Robin Walsh; and me! We debuted the show in Hollywood in 2007 and remounted an expanded version at REDCAT in 2008. The long-awaited New York premiere will be at the Abrons Arts Center at the Henry Street Settlement on October 14, 15, and 16 of this year.

The show is a darkly elegant evening of gorgeous music with a theatrical flourish. Backed by our seconds at the harps, Ann and I battle with songs ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime – Syd Barrett, Jefferson Airplane, Henry Purcell, Lee Hazelwood, plus our original songs – culminating with a psychedelic Halloween finale! There will be blood!

Independent shows like this require outside assistance. Airfare and lodging, puppet construction, harp rental, shipping, technical designers and equipment, publicity and documentation – all these things get more expensive, and we strive to pay all the contributors a respectable fee.

Your support has been invaluable in the past. Without outside help from people like you, projects like this would not grow and flourish. A tax-deductible donation to help us get the show off the ground would be most appreciated!

Adam Dugas is a sponsored artist of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions in behalf of Adam Dugas may be made payable to Fractured Atlas and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

You can make a direct donation via credit card at this link:

https://www.fracturedatlas.org/donate/2821

If you prefer to pay by check, please make them out to “Fractured Atlas” and send them to my attention with my name in the memo line. I will forward them on to Fractured Atlas, which will issue all the appropriate receipts.

Thank you and I look forward to seeing you in October!

Warmly,

Adam Dugas

Please contact me via email for mailing address.

Dear Mr. Steinhafel:

The website for Target proudly trumpets its support of "Diversity" and of
fostering an "inclusive culture." I guess this doesn't mean all customers
since your company supports anti-gay politicians with affiliations to
extremists calling for vigilante killings of gay people.

Your company uses designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Todd Oldham as draws,
using their talent and celebrity to line your pockets. The advertising and
marketing team you hire is allowed to use knowing winks in your brand
identity, and you pay for concerts of gay icons like Grace Jones to make
yourself seem friendly and cool to suck in customers and create brand
loyalty.

How in any god's name can you then justify financial support of this kind
of hate and discrimination?

I am sure your company would not reject a gay couple registering at Target
to have friends and family spend their hard-earned money on your products.
It is sickening to think you are funneling that money to empower those who
look at other human beings and citizens of this country as second-class,
at best, and possibly even as human targets.

There is no justification for your company to be supporting those that are
affiliated with a group this hateful.

I fully support the growing call for a boycott of your company.

Sincerely,

Adam Dugas
Brooklyn, NY

Above is a picture of my great-uncle Fred Dugas, a Vaudevillean, photographed  in his tuxedo and roller skates by my great-grandfather Prime Dugas. Fred grew up in Taftville, Connecticut (my other great-uncle Rene, who passed away at 100 last year, wrote a history of the French Canadians in New England) and left to tour with a Vaudeville troupe. His daughter Shirley, who sent me these photos and her reminiscences, surmises that a troupe must have came through town – they often hired local performers –  and he caught the bug and left with them.

Fred's Tear-away Suit

His gimmick was not just dancing on roller skates (as if that isn’t enough!), but that he had two costumes. One was a white linen suit that tore away to reveal a purple velvet one underneath.

His description on the poster she sent me (from the Orpheum circuit!) reads: “Also the Classy Novelty, the Whirlwind on Skates FRED DUGAS Doing Buck, Wing and Clog Dancing on Skates Making Two Complete Changes of Wardrobe”

He was also a soft shoe and tap dancer. Shirley writes:  ”I remember my father’s dancing shoes. They were black patent leather with WOODEN soles. The soles were shaped with a short upturned toe and they had a one inch heel, just like a regular shoe. I think the wood was oak. Along with the shoes he had a unique dancing mat. It was about 20 to 25 feet longand about 3 feet wide. Maybe a little wider. It was made up of strips of maple wood about 1/2“ thick and 1 inch wide. These strips were glued to canvas. The mat was rolled up for travelling and storage and unrolled and spread on the stage when he used it. The sound of the tap dancing was very different from that on the regular wooden stage. It had a crisp snappish sound.”

It is hard to imagine what these nights of entertainment were like, but on the bill of one of the shows Fred was slated into was this act: ”The World’s Greatest Portrayer of Yankee Female Characters HARRY LaMARR doing his lecture on “Women’s Rights.’” One can only imagine what this comprised of, I wish a transcript survived. LaMarr was popular, though. He billing reads: ”The highest salaried single act ever appearing here.” People have always loved to base worth on money value, c’est la vie.

Eventually Fred moved back to Taftville and continued to play in shows as they came through town. Shirley describes the Minstrel shows that he used to play in as and “end man.” She was going to send a photo of the show itself; the one on the right is another portrait by Prime.

“As you can see there were six men in blackface. They were the ‘end men’ They were the butt of jokes,sang and danced. They use to play the ‘bones.’ The ‘bones’were made from dried spare rib bones. About 6 to 8 inches long and about 1 inch wide. The end man would put one bone between his first and second finger and one between the middle finger and third finger. They would snap them somehow and create a sound that would accompany some singing. It was an art. Not everybody could work “dem bones”. They also did the same thing with spoons.”

Eventually, Fred retired from full-time show business and, since he was also a champion bowler, opened a bunch of bowling alleys in New England.

It was such an incredible feeling to receive these photographs, evidence of this other performer I am related to whom I never got the chance to meet. And what portraits! I am extremely lucky to have had such a talented photographer in the family. I did a search for Prime Dugas on the internet and discovered another trove of photos from the early part of the 20th century. To see these gorgeous young people decked out in their finery from the 20s, 30s and 40s with the old cars – it looks like the pictures you dress up and get taken at a fair – was moving. My recently deceased 100-year-old uncle at 1 years of age in a high chair, beautiful portraits of Berndatte, a great-aunt I met once in the 1970s, and then to see the resemblance with my father, aunts, uncles, sisters and brother. It made me step back and have a whole new appreciation of what interconnectivity can achieve and offer.

Trick Photo with Fred in Wheels

Chewing Up the Scenery artwork by Alejandro Cardenas

Jeffrey was not a constant visitor to the Excellent Workshop salon series that Casey organized in the Fischerspooner rehearsal warehouse in Williamsburg, but he was there for the Citizens Band premiere and expressed interest in presenting the group in the gallery. In the meantime, I presented Chaos & Candy one more time with Jeffrey at the Williamsburg space in Brooklyn, the third annual entitled The Royal Court of Christmas. (Photos below by Lucien Samaha.)

The Citizens Band: Je T'Aime, Scumbag. April, 2005. Photo by Keith Widyolar.

In April, 2005, The Citizens Band premiered the show Je T’Aime, Scumbag, which was performed on a brothel set built in the Wooster Street gallery space as part of the David Lachapelle exhibition “Artists &Prostitutes 1985-2005.” The wild success of that performance led to the gallery officially representing the project and plans began for the group to be presented during Jeffrey’s annual  opening event at Art Basel Miami Beach.

The energy around the project was crazy and built to a frenzy with tons of press coverage. We presented one project outside of the gallery under the Deitch auspices, No New Thing Under the Sun, a biblical epic, at Hiro Ballroom, but returned to Wooster Street in September for what I believe was our greatest work, The Trepanning Opera. Trepanning was a riff on health care, medicine, illness, war and death, and it was the beginning of our attempts to add original songs and sculpt a stronger narrative around what was basically a Weimar-inspired cabaret variety show. The masterful Mathu Andersen worked magic with the sickly make-up, and the black-and-white wardrobe palette fit perfectly with Jim Isermann’s all-white op-art wall panel installation in the gallery.

The Trepanning Opera. Photo by Mathu Andersen.

This was the show that we brought to Art Basel Miami Beach, inaugurating Deitch’s new tradition of presenting concerts in the courtyard of the Raleigh Hotel. It was challenging to adapt the performance to an open-air setting with a raised and much smaller stage, but it came off beautifully and played to huge audience of glittering folk that MAC Cosmetics and Deitch invited.

Sadly, it was not long after this show that my relationship with the project began to turn sour. I barely made it through our last presentation at the gallery, Chewing Up the Scenery, which was performed amidst a group show, “The Garden Party,”  that included a giant grassy hill. It was unfortunate but ultimately necessary for me to move on from working with The Citizens Band.

Photo by Kristy Leibowitz.

I continued to work with the gallery, however, adding musical touches to the Jason Schmidt opening that featured a sculptural performance by Gelitin. For that I curated a group of performers to create ambient music including Theremin player Armen Ra, digital artist Tristan Perich, operatic countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, and an experimental trio led by harpist Mia Theodoratus (I jumped in on vocals). That night was especially wild as Gelitin built an enormous scaffold sculpture throughout the night that straddled a dinner party resting partly on the stage and the gallery wall. Once it was in place, the members (many working without pants, their testicles tied off, some with items stuffed up their asses) created a tiered pyramid and peed into cupped helmets on each other’s heads in a mad version of a fountain.

I also produced a music video for Fischerspooner’s song “Get Confused” shot in the Wooster Street gallery in and on the pyschedelic installation “Hypnogoogia” by Jim Drain and Ara Peterson.

The Art Parade, an annual event that Deitch put up with Paper Magazine for a few years, was also fun. The first year, 2005, featured the Citizens Band in a horse-drawn carriage followed by one of our best shows in the wildly mobbed gallery. It was more rock show than precious cabaret, and the energy was electric. The next year, Deitch sponsored my project Black Rabbit, helping to create the iconic headpiece that Desi Santiago designed for me. I also wore the head in my Easter show Vernal Hoodoo at the Box, which inspired Jeffrey to request a show featuring the trio of ladies Angela DiCarlo, Yana Chupenko and Lizzy Yoder. We created Lady Lady Lady and presented it at the Zipper Theater in November, 2007.

These are highlights of my own experience working with the enormously supportive Deitch Projects. I would be remiss, however, if I did not mention the support I received from his executive director, Suzanne Geiss, and the gallery staff who were always available to help make something happen, no matter how outlandish or insane the request. In fact, sometimes the crazier the request was, the more excited the staff seemed to be. Now THAT is a vibe that will be missed!

The Citizens Band: The Trepanning Opera, 2005. Photo by Mathu Andersen

Deitch Projects has closed its doors, ending of an era of art and performance in New York City.

Say what you will about Jeffrey Deitch, and plenty of people have a plethora of opinions, but he kept an orbit of fascinating and smart people circulating around him and was always game to experiment

I had the opportunity to work in and with the gallery on multiple projects, most significantly with The Citizens Band and Chaos & Candy.

My proximity to Jeffrey began in 2001 when Fischerspooner left Gavin Brown’s enterprise to be represented by Deitch. Jeffrey was always curious about what was going on about town and the night I first spent time with him was when he came to see a burlesque night I was a part of at Coney Island. A few months later at dinner I mentioned my dream of putting up a crazy Christmas show with live people dressed as animals in a petting zoo. He was amused and interested enough by the idea to fully support the first incarnation of Chaos & Candy in December, 2002.

By that time, Jeffrey had rented a warehouse on North 1st Street in Williamsburg that became the Fischerspooner rehearsal space, decked out in mirrors and a wooden dance floor. The week after presenting Fischerspooner at the home of George Lindemann during the first ever Art Basel Miami Beach, I transformed the warehouse into Santa’s Workshop. It was a magical experience. To see my dream  manifested full scale in a giant warehouse full of hundreds of people vitalized my sense of what was possible in New York, and for that I am profoundly thankful to Jeffrey Deitch.

Snowflake Dance, Chaos & Candy, 2002. Photo by Sharoz Makarechi

Over the next few years I was involved with a few other projects. With Viva Ruiz I co-curated and hosted a party called Deitch After Dark inspired by the old variety series Playboy After Dark inside of Adam Kalkin’s Suburban House Kit. Viva’s novela Rosa Negra also had a screening premiere at the 110 space in Brooklyn.

In 2004, Casey decided to host a weekly salon series in preparation for the release of the Fischerspooner album Odyssey. The idea was that the band would rehearse and do periodic open rehearsals alternating with guest artist nights, and it turned the space into an amazing art and performance center. Jeffrey commissioned a gorgeous piece by Richard Wood, a canary yellow floor with a toile-inspired bird pattern, and hung the walls with burgundy velvet curtains. Every Thursday night a different group would perform or present – bands like Haunted Pussy, video artists like Angelo Plessas. We also screened the presidential debates on the giant projection screen for a few hundred people in the neighborhood.

I took over for programming the month of October. Classical Night had Andy Butler (Hercules and Love Affair) and I switching off spinning pop takes on classical music mixed in with the real thing, an Isadora Duncan dance number organized by Stephanie Dixon, Angel Eyedealism sang her techno-Mozart Queen of the Night aria, I performed Schubert’s “Erlkonig” with Katie McKay at the piano, Adam Crystal played Ligeti on violin, and Nick Demopoulos put together a fifteen-piece orchestra that played Ravel’s “Bolero” for a truly grand finale. To see the artsy hipster skate kids drinking free Rheingold while surrounded by a ragtag orchestra standing fifteen feet away building in volume to a violent Romantic crescendo was a phenomenal sight.

Another night I put up a live talk show, The Ange Show, starring my good friend Angela DiCarlo. In the style of classic 60s and 70s variety-talk shows a la Judy Garland, Dinah Shore, Mitzi Gaynor, it had a live band, guests, and back-up man dancers! Finally, I organized a screening of a film my friend Sarah Sophie Flicker had made. She added that she and her friends had been talking about doing a cabaret, and could it follow the screening? My only caveat was that I wanted to be involved, and thus was the The Citizens Band born.

The Citizens Band, premiere performance, October, 2004. Photo by Tom Carpenter.

To be continued.

I donated some artwork for an auction benefiting the Riverkeeper organization sponsored by DBA pens. The request was to fill one of their Endless Notebooks with art of some kind using their pens. Some of the other contributing artists included Mick Jagger, David Schwimmer, Ruben & Isabel Toledo, Molly Ringwald, and MGMT. There was a silent auction at the Standard Hotel in New York, followed by an online auction. Mine didn’t sell yet, and you can still bid here. For my submission I made a book of drawings for “The Last 27 Movies I Saw (In Order)” including NEW MOON, PORTRAIT OF A SHOWGIRL, EYES OF LAURA MARS and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. I really do keep a list, including what format I watch them on. Don’t ask why I drew GAY SEX IN THE 70S as a VHS tape, I watched it on Netflix streaming and the time period it covered only went up to the creation of the VHS!

Chinese rat poison sign on the building site next door. Why do I love this? It is so Chinese pirate.

Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn. May 25, 2010

It turns out this is an art project and the book is already for sale. I really like the posters and  imagining people coming up with ideas and scrawling on them, but my first reaction after realizing that there was a book for sale was to scrutinize the photos I took on the street to see if they were really hand-filled or just reproduced. Hand-drawn, I approve.