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The Performance Art of Sherry Glaser-Love & La Tigresa
Sherry Glaser-Love as "Ma"
Just in time for Women’s History Month, performance artists extraordinaire Sherry Glaser-Love and La Tigresa will take the stage with their one-woman shows about environmentalism, the divine feminine, and the erotic in Here She Comes…Again, March 23rd in Ukiah, at the Saturday Afternoon Clubhouse.
The 2 hour show is sure to roll heads, invoke inspiration, and incite laughter, as the two performers express their hearts and minds about a world out of balance and their quests for peace through love and eroticism. Sherry Glaser Love returns from Hollywood, with An Audience with Ma, where she channels the Jewish mother of us all in an interactive performance piece. La Tigresa speaks out in Naked Sacred Earth: Eco-Erotic Spoken Word, a series of beat poems connecting divinity, femininity and luster in a sex-positive fashion.
Divine Inspiration
Her last name says it all. Sherry Glaser-Love channels the Goddess, Ma, who returns to Earth after a long hiatus, to find her lover’s version of their life together, The Bible, as the word of law.
“She’s here with wisdom and compassion and tells a story that’s never been told,” says Glaser-Love.
Ma brings her To Do List, a counter balance to his 10 Commandments in a humorous and witty show that ignites laughter and even a tender tear.
“We need that reminder, you’re doing good, keep on, take care of yourself, don’t run, eat your veggies, forgive,” reflects Glaser-Love.
Glaser-Love relies on a decade of material she’s developed from her performance piece, Oh My Goddess!, in the new interactive and improvisational show, all in the context of Ma’s creation story.
“We understand the God story. I’ve created the story into a wonderful, fanciful, feminine story. I invite the audience to ask questions about it and converse with Ma,” says Glaser-Love.
Glaser-Love says she devised Ma when she was in Labor with her daughter, Lucy, going through contractions and child birth, thinking about her own religious upbringing. “I was stupefied the 3 major religions have a tradition of subjugating women whether its putting them in birkas, believing menstrual blood is unclean, or dominating their bodies over religion,” she reflects.
“We see it today,” she continues, “with the women’s contraception hearing with all men on the panel; the feminine is insignificant, has no value and must be controlled and dominated by a male patriarchal structure.”
While, her message is about embracing the divine feminine, Glaser-Love says it’s also about love, embracing peace and protecting the planet.
“The message is, if we don’t’ take care of our mother [Earth] we’re going to die… There’s a fierceness we need right now and the fierce feminine is essential to our survival,” she said.
Why the sense of urgency? “I come from a long line of manic women,” she explains.
Both her mother and grandmother were committed to mental institutions; her mother escaped. So, Glaser-Love knows the plethora of places the mind goes and where society can drive a person. But, what keeps her out of such seedy environments? Art and action.
“My mother said reveal yourself,” remembers Glaser-Love.
Back from Hollywood, where she received mixed reviews in Oh My Goddess!, she’s now got her sights on grander goals. “My soul says take it to the streets and tear off your clothes….the Occupy Movement, march onto Washington D.C. with weeping and wailing women and I’ll bring Ma to awaken the masses.”
Or, a Hollywood movie contract will suffice, she says. But one way or another Sherry Glaser-Love is sure to reveal and awaken in the process and she won’t stop until she’s done.
Bio-Sexuality
La Tigresa
“To be bio-sexual is to be in love with the Earth,” explains La Tigresa, who will start the evening with her beat spoken word poetry, likening environmentalism to making love. She believes everyone is “bio-sexual.”
“We are all in love with the Earth-how could we not be? And, we respond in a physical way to the Earth, that’s why people like to go to the ocean and they like flowers,” she said.
La Tigresa’s poetry calls on men and women alike to reclaim what is sacred.
“The earth has been taken for granted and that’s the way women have been treated,” reflects La Tigresa, who made national headlines for blockading several logging trucks bare breasted, as she recited poems of the Goddess in 2000.
“They were flabbergasted,” she recalls, “They didn’t know what to do. Had I had a bomb or a gun, they know how to deal with that, but I was a bare breasted woman saying poetry and the poetry was erotic,” she recalls.
La Tigresa’s work comes from a deep well of love and eroticism that she manifests into performance as a form of direct action. “We’re not holding signs,” she reflects, “I’m using my body.”
Through spoken word, La Tigresa uses her mind and body to reclaim the divine feminine as a source of fire for environmental activism. And, she calls on others to join her cause.
“In order to survive we have to evolve to a level so we can take care of our home, My job as a poet is to hold that vision and do everything I can to encourage that,” she said.
Earth Films produced a 7-minute film about La Tigresa, Strip Tease to Save the Trees, which can be viewed on her website www.latigresa.net.
Sherry Glaser-Love and La Tigressa perform 1 night only in Here She Comes…Again, 2 1-woman shows to benefit the Mendocino Country Independent Fund for Investigative Journalism, Friday March 23rd at the Saturday Afternoon Clubhouse 107 S. Oak St., Ukiah. Cost is $10-20 sliding scale. For tickets or more info call (707) 468-1660 or email editors@mendocinocountry.com
To listen to a conversation between Christina Aanestad and La Tigresa, featured on the national community radio show, Sprouts, through the Pacifica Network, click on the media player below.