Katie Longazel on PIE IN THE FACE

Summary:

The piece begins as a direct address to the audience. The actress starts a conversational, relaxed, and comedic story on the importance of food. She talks about the food that excites her, motivates her, and effects her emotions. The actress begins to talk about a specific food phobia; key lime pie. She talks about the gross green custardy concoction, her father’s favorite pie, and begins to recount a memory of her mother bringing home key lime pie for her father on an Anniversary. The mood changes abruptly as the actress tells the story of her mother getting pied in the face at the hand of her father. She recalls the red and green left on her mothers face. She finishes the story, takes out a key lime pie, and eats it simply.

Process:

The piece was driven by the idea that an act of violence witnessed as a young person will consume you, unless you consume it first. The actress eats the pie, because for years the memory of the pie ate at her, preventing her from enjoying the dessert. The idea of “a pie in the face” is so associated with clowns and pranksters and has always been comedic. However the trauma of domestic violence is anything but funny. To explore these contrasting components in my piece I started by physicalizing the act of violence. Then I phicalized the child’s struggle within the family dynamic, and I told the secret of the child who witnessed the abuse. After exploring the story with mostly physical work, I felt that the charged content of the piece would be best expressed in a “stand up” or comedic address to the audience in order to play into the stereotypical pie-in-the-face clown routine and keep the shock of the violence intact. I felt it was important to address both the comedy and tragedy of receiving a pie in the face. My desire was to make them comfortable with me, the storyteller, and allow themselves to let their guard down and stay tuned for the entirety of the piece without feeling overwhelmed or sorry for the storyteller. The final piece of the pie, was figuring out how to end the story without leaving the audience with the charged material and bolting offstage, but also without resolving the story in pretty pink ribbons and saying “everything is ok”. I felt the only way to do this was to consume the pie myself, showing the violence taken in by the witness and the control the witness has over the violence.

Inspiration:

I was inspired by people who keep secrets inside and use humor to defuse painful memories. Daniel allowed us the opportunity to explore our own secrets in class and through that I found such power in secret keeping, but more so in the telling of a secret. Everyone who told a secret had a specific body language, way of speaking, comfort zone. I wanted to shown this seeming simply act of telling a secret.

Mentor:

I will always be in awe of Dawn Saito. Her ability to transform her body completely to inhabit a feeling, or a memory, an animal, or a tornado. She dives into her work completely and inhabits every moment onstage. There is not one steam shown in her performance, not one second that she is not present. Her organic and completely powerful performances can make the simple act of looking up, a moment that is bone chilling. I explored my story in physical storytelling, inspired by Saito. I attempted to inhabit both of the victims, and hope to in the future in habit the offender.

Whoopi Goldberg’s form of comedy used as an entry point to her audience struck me as extremely powerful. She can win you over with humor, and then send slam you with a message so profound and charged you can’t remember how you went from laughing to jaw dropped stun of “did she really say that?” I felt that the duality of a clown, and the two meanings of the pie in my story lent itself nicely to using Goldberg’s technique of storytelling.