Sage confesses to her audience at the Garage

"My Mother's Hand ..."
part of the Queer Girl Theatre Project 1st annual performance series at the Garage.

The first part to Sage's show combined childlike tenderness with the sacrosanct as she depicted the always disquieting topic of an abusive mother. That character reminded me not of Medea, but of Lorca's Bernarda Alba, though more Italian and more furious. Still, doing her piece, Sage was looking at us the entire time, forthcoming, exposed, immediate and even funny.

The white poetry piece about her grandmother was beautiful in how lyrically she mingled empathy with admiration. If the thought hadn't crept into our subconscious by then she verbally acknowledged that her grandmother's qualities she desired to find in her own ideal spouse. Were this woman to come her way, Sage confessed to us that she would at once lay the world at her feet and cast a spell to make her go away.

I wish I remembered more the songs she sang and I am hoping that I can get a cut of them from Jenny Jigour who was filming the performance. The second one she performed standing on that symbolic box-crate-casket especially took me somewhere in feeling and imagination. I am amazed at how easy the a cappella melodies were to follow, almost hum along to and how uniquely suited they were to displaying a kind of bucolic lesbian emotional landscape.

The 2nd to last piece which I have seen performed a few times now, is the "Fuck Women" a.k.a. "We Women Fuck." I didn't know she was going to do it and was relieved to find myself feeling less suffocated by the vivid details portrayed in her words this time around. I also noticed it was abbreviated in some parts, while still referring to the myriad potentialities of lesbian sex, she'd removed the zealous tangents about her personal preference for marathon cunnilingus. I suppose audience members have varying limits in feeling thusly exposed, even while they unabashedly search out uncensored queer expression. In other words, I am pleased with the updates. I should add that this poem is being made into a film, so stay tuned...

A highlight was the poem @ the Dyke parade, which was an audience participation piece based on the upbeat structure of Mother Goose's nursery rhymes. Considering the memory triggered was of the Russian version of "The house that Jack built", "Вот дом который построил Джек," the only hint I had growing up that it wasn't native was the builder's proper (Anglo) name. A Dyke parade nursery rhyme- wonderful! I wish my teachers had me memorize Sage's version in grade school instead.

I am cheering for Jamie Cotton, aka miss Sage as she definitively goes off to L.A. and works on emerging as an industry writer for TV & Film. I anticipate that when I watch a show that's based on her writing, it will contain human darkness, natural beauty, women f*cking and a pinch of warm-hearted playfulness sprinkled all over.