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[title]As her alter ego, Sherry, performance artist Ann Liv Young has engaged in her share of outrageous onstage antics; but none created quite the stir as when she interrupted Rebecca Patek's performance during last year's American Realness. Festival curator Ben Pryor removed Young, Patek wrote an essay response, and the dance world abounded with opinions on what is and isn't acceptable in live performance. Now, Young, as herself—not Sherry—has a chance to speak (albeit from a cage) in Ann Liv Young in Jail at Jack.
If provocative performance artist Ann Liv Young hadn’t been acting as her Southern-psychologist alter ego, Sherry, she wouldn’t have done what she did nearly a year ago at American Realness. During choreographer Rebecca Patek’s ineter(a)nal f/ear, a work exploring the stigma and trauma of rape, Young intervened and, midperformance, confronted Patek about her show—asking if she was making fun of being raped. “I’m a purist, in that if I’m dressed as Sherry, I am Sherry,” she says. “If I hadn’t been, I would have just gotten up and left.” Now, at the invitation of Alec Duffy, artistic director of Jack, she’s back, not as Sherry but as herself—sort of. In Ann Liv Young in Jail, Young is confined to a cage, where she dances, sings and addresses what happened at American Realness.
What freaks people out about Sherry?
Not everybody’s freaked out by Sherry. I think one of the main things is that no one is safe, including the curators. She calls everybody out; she’s paying attention to everyone, and there’s no position that you can have where you’re off-limits. I think curators think, Well I booked this, so I’m off-limits. But Sherry’s always pulling the curators into the mess. I think that makes it a little unbookable. [Laughs] Even though people still book it.
It’s time-based. Watching you perform as Sherry is like witnessing a metamorphosis. I can see you thinking, but I’m not sure what you’re thinking.
Yeah, who knows. Half the time Michael [Guerrero, Young’s partner]’s like, “Do you remember doing this? Do you remember saying this?” I’m like, “I have no idea.” I don’t totally leave my body—I feel very much in control. But I am incredibly focused. I just can’t do as myself what Sherry does. I feel like when I’m Sherry I have a whole other set of skills that are things I don’t tap into. The process of putting on the costume helps. I do notice it with kids. I’m around children a lot now. With hyperactive kids, I can feel that I’m pretty good at figuring out how to relate to them, talk to them, communicate with them, and I think it’s one of the reasons why our kids are strong. [Ed. note: Young has two daughters, Lovey and Akiko.] I do feel like I have a capability where I can reach people as myself. I’m much less scary than Sherry is. [Laughs] Although kids love Sherry. Lovey adores Sherry.
Why did you agree to this?
When Alec asked me, I had a manager who told me that I shouldn’t do it. He said, “You need to quit doing these little shows. You need to stop doing American Realness. You need to only do big shows,” and that’s why I haven’t really done anything in a while here. But then I quit working with him, and I decided I wanted to do this show. I was interested in it from the beginning, but I was mostly just trying to listen to a manager because I felt like I don’t really listen to anybody. [Laughs] I was like, Maybe it’s good for me to take advice from someone.
How did the jail part happen?
Michael and I sat down with Alec. At first I thought he was wanting to put Sherry in jail, which made sense. I was like, “Sherry will get out of jail—she will inevitably find a way,” and he said, “I don’t really want to put Sherry in jail. I thought we would put you in jail.” I was like, “You know that we’re different people, right? You know that it’s a character and that I’m not a character?” He specified that his venue would like to put me, the artist, in jail. I thought about it, and I was like, This is great. I’m going to try to explore this idea. It’s really silly in a lot of ways. Mostly I was worried about safety issues. That was my main thing, but Michael doesn’t think we need to be so worried. It’s just always the thing that I stress about the most.
Will you feel more vulnerable not being in a Sherry costume?
I don’t really feel stressed about safety necessarily because it’s me: I just know how people are and I see how they behave. I see that everyone is always like, what she’s doing is so bad and wrong, but then it’s like they’re the ones taking the microphone stand and throwing it at me. They’re the ones who can’t be trusted. This is what makes me nervous—that the show in general could invoke anger. Maybe not! I have no idea. But I think people are still pretty mad about what I did at American Realness. A lot of venues probably won’t book me here anymore because of that situation. It is what it is. So it’s not because I feel this is going to be a dangerous show; I always think about safety. When I’m in a 40-pound mermaid tail [in Mermaid Show], spitting fish guts at you—and I’m really in it, so people get very afraid—you just have to figure out, how are we going to do this without people getting hurt? It’s hard when I’m in a cage, because I feel I can’t protect people. It just takes away a little bit of control. Alec doesn’t want me to have interns helping me at all.
Will you have stuff in your cage?
Yeah! [Laughs] I told him, “If you really want me to be me, it’s not going to be a very interesting show.” If I was really myself, which is completely silly and impossible because it’s always a performance, I would be working on my computer. That was my original fear, but I’ve taken it in a different direction.
Which is?
I’m choreographing and learning music for it. I’m making a show in a cage. I’m figuring out a way to bring up the American Realness events in a way that maybe people can hear my opinion on the situation.
Are you going to be dancing?
Yeah. We’ll see. I do a lot of dancing in [Young’s latest show] Elektra, so I feel a little like, Okay I haven’t lost it all. [Laughs] Vanessa Soudan’s in Elektra; she plays Clytemnestra. She has her own fitness brand called Viva Bodyroll. It’s kind of like dance fitness—you will love her in Elektra. We dance together a lot in the show; it was just nice to move. I haven’t done it in a long time. I have to get massages because I’m so stiff now.
Are you including music?
I’m doing lots of music and singing. I’m using some in-ear monitoring, and I’m learning lots of music and stuff that I’ve written: I record myself saying it naturally and then I learn that. That’s how I’ve shaped a lot of it so it has this feeling of, This is Ann Liv speaking, even though it’s heavily edited and sculpted.
Are you even Ann Liv in a performance?
No. Of course.
You improvise a lot because you’re reading a crowd. But is this set?
This is a lot more set than the Sherry stuff. The Sherry stuff is never set.
How do you dress yourself as Ann Liv?
I know. This is interesting to me, this whole idea of playing myself, and this is what I was interested in with Elektra as well because in a way I’m playing a version of myself as Elektra. It’s this more hermit side of myself—this human who’s completely misunderstood and hidden away from everybody. With this show, I’m trying to go with: Who am I? What aspects of myself do I want to make very bold? What is important to show and what isn’t important? I’m more working with a stereotypical idea of who I am, but really from the eyes of the viewers rather than for myself. I am obviously informed by myself, but I think it’s also important that I work with what I think they think.
You can control what part of you is seen?
Exactly. I think so. My one fear is that the building will catch on fire and the key will be lost.
That’s dark!
I’m telling Michael to bring his wire cutters just in case. That’s crazy paranoia but I don’t know. I have two kids, so I need to be their mother. [Laughs]
Have you ever been locked up?
Yes, and I have very bad claustrophobia. I got locked in a bathroom once where I could not open the door and there was no window. I’ve also been trapped in an elevator. I’ve also done an MRI where they shut you in that thing for a brain scan—I’ve done it a bunch of times for my back and my head, and I had to do some really intense meditation. The MRI was actually not as bad as I thought it would be, but the bathroom was not good. It made me realize to always have my cell phone. Anyway, I don’t like it, but the cage is maybe a little different because you can see out. Michael will be there. When I had Akiko, it was a very intense experience. I had no epidural, no painkiller, and I was on Pitocin, the thing that induces your labor and makes your contractions insanely horrible. That was also a moment where I felt like I was suffocating; it was a scary moment. It’s obviously about control. You can’t control the pain, you can’t control when it’s coming, you can’t control that there’s no window for you to get out of in the bathroom. I have a feeling this cage will be not so bad. It’s not like a cell. It would be nice if it was a cell. [Laughs] They should be a little more extreme with it.
Why did you do what you did at American Realness?
Do you know the whole story?
Just what I’ve read. I wasn’t there that night, but I can’t say it surprised me after having seen you selling merchandise at the “Sherry Art Fair.”
[Festival curator] Ben Pryor wanted me to do Sleeping Beauty that year. We had just premiered the whole thing at Graz, and it’s an amazing show. It’s a very expensive show to produce because it’s four hours long and it has a lot of heavy tech. We were going to do it at PS1 and we were in talks with them, and they didn’t want me to do it at American Realness, obviously. So I agreed and said, “Let’s do a pop-up Sherry shop.” That seemed like the easiest thing to do and it wasn’t a show, necessarily. I didn’t see any of the work [in the festival] because I was working in the shop all day into the night almost every day. I did see Dana Michel’s show [Yellow Towel], which I loved very much. I saw Jillian Peña’s Polly Pocket show as well. I was sitting there, and a few people had come by the table and said, “Have you seen Rebecca’s show?” Throughout the whole festival.
So you got a ticket and went.
My friend and his boyfriend were there by chance. I had never heard of her. I didn’t know anything about the work. I just knew that people were like, “I’m curious to know what you think.” I really knew nothing. And I really was excited. I was like, I’m watching a show, my kids are at home with Michael. I just so happened to be in the Sherry costume. [Laughs] Which was really unfortunate for her, because if I hadn’t been I would have just gotten up and left.
You would have walked out midshow?
Definitely. Hands down. No question. I wouldn’t have walked across the stage the way I did as Sherry, I would have gone up the back. There’s no way I could have sat and watched it as myself. No way. Without saying something, without speaking up: What is happening in this room right now? I just needed people to acknowledge that something was off, that something was not right. I actually liked the first video. It’s weird to watch something as Sherry. This was a problem for me, because I really just wanted to be myself sitting and watching, but I wasn’t. I was in full Sherry makeup, hair and everything with Bailey [Nolan] sitting next to me as her character, Winnebago, dressed in a French maid’s costume. I kept looking at my friend, and he was like, “Just sit and watch.”
What happened?
Rebecca comes down from the top and goes in front, and a guy handed out pieces of paper that said, “We would like your feedback.” I was like, No you wouldn’t. It was pretty obvious that they didn’t want anybody’s feedback. It was a trendy move. I didn’t like that, but I was like, all right. I think they had spelled out AIDS with their arms, and then they were going into some other dance thing and I think this is when I got up. I was really not angry; I was like, I physically cannot sit here and watch this because I feel it’s not right. I know it’s live theater, and I think that’s why I have a stronger reaction to it. I had a very visceral response. I stood up and walked across the stage and went up to the steps, and first I reprimanded the audience. I was like, “All of you are dressed the same. You’re all from Williamsburg. You’re all her friends. None of you question anything you’re watching,” and then I looked at her and said, “Have you actually been raped?” She was really clearly thrown. She said, “You’re really fucked up” or “fuck you” or something like that, and I was like, “I am just telling you that what I have just seen, I don’t feel like you’ve been raped. I feel like you’re making fun of being raped, and I think we should question what’s happening right now. You handed me a piece of paper saying you want to know how I feel about what I’m watching—I’m telling you how I feel.” Ben Pryor was sleeping; he was very tired. It’s obviously very exhausting.
He was sleeping during the show?
Yeah. He woke up because obviously there was a dialogue happening and he tried to get me out. I think then I was like, “Maybe you should be a part of this conversation since you booked this. Then he really pushed me out. So I went and got my megaphone, went back and they tried to not let me in, of course, but I somehow pushed through. I shoved my megaphone through the door and said, “Rebecca, I will give you free Sherapy for the rest of the festival.” Ben was livid. He was ready to kill me.
How cool would it have been if she had taken you up on that? It could have turned into another show, right?
This is what I’ve heard from some people in Europe. At the end of her show, she has all of her oppressors who are men in the end as credits and now I am one of them—it’s not clear if it’s Sherry or me. I think it’s a picture of Sherry, but my name, which is amazing too. It’s the whole problem: That people think we’re the same person. So that’s what happened and it just got crazier and crazier. She wanted me kicked out of the festival, Ben didn’t feel comfortable kicking me out. I’m not allowed back in Abrons ever.
Are you excited by that?
It’s great. I never fully felt like American Realness was everything it could be and what I want it to be and it should be, and I was trying to help it be that, and that’s always what I’m doing by trying to make work where you ask important questions and say, What are you doing? I think that is what people should be doing. It’s what people do in my shows all the time. They stand up and say, “What the hell are you doing?” It’s live theater. If she doesn’t want any interaction, she shouldn’t make live theater as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have anything against her or her work. I hope she keeps making stuff, but the character Sherry works with rape victims all the time. It’s a touchy subject.
Do you mean in Sherapy sessions? For real?
For real.
No offense—but what are people doing telling Sherry their problems?
[Laughs] They do. Everything is confidential. We don’t share the sessions unless they say I can. I think Sherry really helps people. You know we just did the World Congress of Psychiatry in Madrid, where there were 10,000 psychiatrists and psychologists and analysts and I performed for them, and I taught therapists how to give Sherapy. It was crazy.
Can you explain what Sherapy is?
It’s therapy by Sherry, but it’s a very special technique, which involves Sherry’s wisdom. It’s like Sherry’s psychosis. It’s that ability that Sherry has to tap into people quickly. There was an analyst at the conference—he was amazing, he had to be 80 years old, and he said that Sherry in an hour did what he tries to do in five years.
No!
It’s pretty amazing. We’re working with people who are going through chemo, with people who are super depressed. It’s a little bit intense.
When do you do this?
People book us in Europe, so they’ll book a hotel room and we’ll do 60 sessions in three days. Or we’ll do it in the truck or in a dressing room, just any space. I have people that I work with here, but it’s mostly that they’re coming from Berlin and I do a session with them while they’re here. I do think Sherry has a gift for giving therapy, but a lot of people don’t see it. We’re working in Europe so much. I feel there’s a whole other aspect of my work that people just don’t see here.
Maybe people don’t have the same inhibitions with Sherry as they would a therapist.
Totally. She’s so hard to place. You don’t know how much money she makes. You don’t really know where she shops. You don’t know where she lives. People open up very quickly.
I guess it will appear as more poetic. It’s not like, “Okay, now we’re going to have a discussion about American Realness.” The show is poetic; I’m not saying it’s poetry, I’m just saying it was built that way. I mostly chose the music that I really love as opposed to top-20 pop countdown, but we had a weird way of choosing music for Elektra too, so I’m working in a similar vein. One song I’m using is “Let It Be” by the Beatles. And I’m using some rap songs; it’s also nice that I’m going to rap, not Sherry. That’s good. I’ve mainly chosen stuff I really like. I’m using a little more old-school rap. There isn’t a ton of popular music in it.
What are you thinking about in terms of the movement?
It’s maybe more cabaret-styled movements, very sensual. I climb on the cage. I use my muscles. [Laughs] I’m supposed to be hiring a personal trainer soon. I’m a little bit terrified. I haven’t worked out like that in a long time. I should really be doing it now before the show. It’s physical. It’s not like crazy dancing, but it’s more physical than the Sherry stuff is. I mean the Sherry stuff is so physical, just not in the same way.
Do you have a dance practice?
Oh my God, are you kidding? I wish I could say yes. It’s bad. I am bad. I don’t stretch. I don’t do anything that I should do. After we had to put Lydia [Young’s dog] down, I got so sick. I was like, for sure I was dying from some horrible disease.
That’s why you canceled Sleeping Beauty, right? It was supposed to be performed at MoMA PS1.
That’s why we canceled. It was really intense and scary. And I am a healthy person: I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, I sleep. That’s when I was like, what I’m doing to myself—having kids, the stress that I just went through with this animal that I love, having children and trying to do this work that I’m doing that can be obviously difficult and challenging, and traveling all over the world, I have to take different care of my body than I’ve been taking. That’s when I realized my diet really affects me. I eat healthy, but I was having way too much caffeine, way too much sugar, probably too much salt, and I cold-turkey quit everything. I slowly introduced it back, but still no caffeine. I’m being careful. My goal is to have no wheat, no sugar, no dairy, because I just feel better. The purer I am with what I put in me, the better. I’m just letting some things go, which is hard. I just want to be able to make the work. I want to be able to continue doing it, and I was really like, Okay, I have to have a new job. I was thinking because of the way I was feeling. I couldn’t get out of bed for three weeks; my dizziness was so bad. It was so scary.
Did it gradually go away?
When anybody says to you, “We need to check to see if you have an aneurysm in your brain or your neck, and we need to check to see if you have a brain tumor”.… It scared the shit out of me. And I don’t really need to be scared like that because every day I’m very appreciative of everything. I look at my kids every day and tell them how much I love them. It was very scary, and I changed my diet fast and my doctor was amazing. He called me in the emergency room and said, “You have Ménière’s disease,” which was amazing because it’s not a big deal, but he gave me an answer. I think that was the hardest thing: not knowing. If I didn’t have kids, it wouldn’t have been so difficult for me. It sounds horrible to say, but I see how much they need me. It’s just scary to think of them without you. He said, “You have to quit caffeine, you have to really shift your diet completely. When you feel dizzy and you don’t want to move, you need to move.” When the vertigo is coming on, I drink tons of water and sit down and breathe and then I walk.
What do you want to get out of this show at Jack?
I think that sometimes I feel like people don’t really hear my voice. They see my shows, but I do have important things to say as myself, autonomous from the work and autonomous from Sherry. I do feel like people really freaked out about this one event, and I still don’t really understand why. For me, when I’m making a show and people stand up and respond, that’s a good thing in my eyes. And sometimes I’m trying to get them to stand up and respond and sometimes I’m not. There are people all the time who come up to me and rip my wig off and disturb my set and leave. That’s their message, that’s their way of communication and I’m fine. I also don’t think of the work as so precious. I know the work can be destroyed. I think one of the things that bothers me about the New York dance scene specifically is that everybody is patting each other on the back. There’s not a real honest discourse, and I’ve always had trouble with that even at Hollins, the college where we’re all women, we’re all trying to do the same thing—people did not give honest feedback, No. 1, because they actually don’t know what to say. They don’t know how they feel about what they’re seeing. That’s one problem.
What’s another?
Another is, well if I tell you how I feel then you won’t come to my show, and you won’t like what I make. It’s a cycle that I don’t want to be a part of and for me, her show was the epitome of that cycle. It’s like, This is art, this is precious. How dare you stand up in my show? This is my show. And I understand wanting to protect your show, but then make a TV show where no one can ruin it for you. I think I made it better, personally. I think Sherry’s the reason she’s getting booked in Europe. I haven’t talked to her, so I don’t know her perspective, but it seemed to me it was an invitation for something great to happen and it’s too bad she couldn’t…but she’s not me. She’s her own person. I think I made it better, personally. [Laughs] I thought it was a great show. But I was also genuinely responding. I didn’t go into her show being like, I’m going to walk out. I really went there feeling like, This is great. I haven’t seen a show in a long time. I don’t really have the energy or time to do that: to plan to go mess up someone’s work.
Weren’t you feeling feisty sitting at your shop?
I was definitely feisty. There was tension all week. But you know what? It could have been Ishmael [Houston-Jones] and Emily [Wexler]’s show. I could have gone to that, and that could have been worse. I don’t see what’s wrong with going to see someone’s show and speaking up if it’s what you feel. But I also love that artist who steals pieces of huge exhibitions and sells them on eBay. I like that. I think it’s nice that people are still making stuff like that. She doesn’t want to be known; she doesn’t want press. She’s doing it because she believes in something. This idea that your art is so precious that people can’t stand up and speak and leave, I don’t want to live in that world. I don’t want to make work alongside that. And I know that I won’t ever be invited to American Realness again, but I don’t want to be even in the same category with just that idea. They will never say that they won’t invite me back. They will never say that, but that’s okay. It was bound to happen at some point. [Laughs] At least she went out with a bang. I was going to go back the next night, because they were like, “Rebecca will not do the show if you’re in the building.” It was so funny to me that I was like, Okay I should be in the building.
Why didn’t you go?
Because I had to go be with my kids, and Michael was like, “You need sleep.” Michael’s all about strategy. He said, “You did it. You made your point. Go home.” I think it would have been great. [Laughs] I had a whole vision! It’s okay. Sometimes I listen to him. In that moment I did. There was a moment, where I was like, “Michael, is there something wrong with me that I don’t feel bad about what I’ve done? That I really think what I did was good?” And he was like, “Nothing is wrong with you.”
Did you read the essay Rebecca wrote about how she was raped?
I didn’t read it. I actually assumed that she was raped, because I didn’t think she would have the guts to tackle that. But Sherry’s point was: How are you handling this? What are you doing? What are you saying? What is this?
And Sherry just couldn’t wait until it was over?
No. I guess she could have, but for me Sherry moves off feeling. The strategy is the structure, and this wasn’t Sherry’s show, so it wasn’t like, Okay I’m going to go in and watch 15 minutes and then leave. It was like, I’m going to go in, watch a show and go home. I had a super intense reaction to it. I think it’s great that she’s dealing with rape; I think it’s really good to tackle subjects like that. It was the way in which it was presented, which to me felt very hipster. If you’re going to hand us pieces of paper that say, “let’s talk about this,” then why can’t we talk about it?
You’re allergic to hipster.
There’s a thing on the Internet right now tells you 15 things to do if you want to be a hipster, and one of them is go see my shows. I think people think of me as hipster central, however Sherry is all about authenticity and to me, it was the whole context [of Patek’s show]. Up to a point, I was really okay. I was like, this is manageable. I was really trying to connect. I feel like I’m good at giving feedback and watching things, and I’m good at seeing what somebody else wants it to be and helping them achieve that. I feel that’s a strength of mine and always has been. If it had been me, I would have walked out too. It was a moral problem. I couldn’t sit there and watch it. I felt I needed to react or respond, which I think is good. Theater should do that to you. That’s the beautiful thing about live performance is that we are living, reactive humans watching what you’re making, and I don’t think it’s bad that someone stands up and says they don’t understand what you’re making, and leaves. I don’t see that as a bad thing, but most of the New York art scene does. I don’t view it like that. In Snow White and the Radio Show, our goal was to get as many people to leave as possible, so I think I just have a different perception of good and bad. A lot of people wrote me emails saying how thankful they were that I stood up and said something. So there were a lot of people that were mad at me, but there were a lot of people that weren’t. And several of them are rape victims. I told Ben that I would be happy to speak with her. I think he told her that and she had no interest. Sherry is hard-core. Why wouldn’t she stand up in a show? I’m very clear about my own beliefs. That’s never been a problem for me, and I think that’s what’s good about this cage show: They will see that I am separate from Sherry. People are like, Why can’t you just be yourself? Why can’t you be like Penny Arcade and that’s your character? Why can’t I just be who I am and explore what I need to explore? I also wasn’t saying to Rebecca, “Don’t explore this.” I was saying, I’m telling you what I see. She just didn’t want to hear that. [Laughs] ’Cause, you know, she’s in the middle of a show.
Ann Liv Young is at Jack Dec 3–6.