Queer Art Impact presents Gay Wars: The Saturday Show

GAY WARS: THE QUEER ECOLOGY // May 15 - 21, 2011 //  A week-long, New York City festival of performances, panels and meet-ups to unravel the queerness of human interaction. Join us as we celebrate QAI's one year anniversary with the launch of so much pre-pride hotness. queerai.com for details.

The Homo Bonobo Project is the latest creation of world famous performance artist, drag performer and homo about town, Shelly Mars. Playing a Belgian feminist anthropologist named Dr. Ghislaine Pussait, Shelly will hilariously present the very real research Shelly went to Congo to do with the Bonobo apes, one of the most endangered and some might say queer creatures left on this planet.

Pitched between scholarship and absurdism, Dr. Pussait has forged ahead with her very worthy mission to prove a link between the social activities of urban homosexuals with their forgotten cousins the bonobo ape. By showing the scientific link between these jungle and subcultural urban communities, Dr. Pussait blurs the line that has until now divided all human and non-human animal kind.

Pussait is concerned about the problems in Congo. The Bonobo are not only little understood, they are endangered. Studying them has put pressure on their habitat. But it also is paradoxically the best way to protect them from human predators, and from the environmental crisis that extends into the jungles of Congo, a nation still suffering after the ravages of colonialism. Dr. Pussait’s initially organized and confident presentation breaks down as it hilariously reveals the complex ethics involved in modern scientific field research on sexuality. The Human bonobo project will challenge students to question whether liberal notions of sexuality are transferrable across time zones, continents, societies, and species. Further, is there any way we can even study sexually with out imposing our own ideas of what’s good and proper, and -- most importantly -- our own secret desires? So you can see that Dr. Pussait has serious work to do, and she wants to come to your academic or cultural institution to get it done! With her scientific data in tow, Pussait will pose inspiring questions for all those thinkers and doers involved in the productions of queer theory, animal studies, the history of science, performance studies, as well as cultural anthropology.

Want more Shelly Mars? Check out the show at Dixon Place immediately following The Tank performance for a special episode of Bulldyke Chronicles. Show starts at 9:30pm

Also on the bill -- Joy Conway in FAT

ABOUT // Joy Marie Conway, M.Ed (Artist. Educator. Inspirator) was born in Chicago Illinois to an international vocalist and a local cab driver. Now, in Brooklyn, she works as an artist, educator and inspirator. She has been studying and performing various arts disciplines since age four and gaining an increased interest in the art if living and being alive. When away from her day job as coordinator for youth activism, she’s working diligently to develop an educational and collective institution promoting the creative care of self, society and earth. In 2009, Joy earned a Master of Education at Loyola University Chicago and is committed to transformative and liberatory justice, artistic self-expression and building intimate community.

FAT is a one woman, theatric experience that explores weight, body image, family, health traditions, eating and food, self-esteem and anger management, pleasure, resurrection and honor. The driving concept behind FAT and was born out of my identity as ‘the skinny one in a family of full-figured woman’. Weight has always been an up and down struggle for the women in my family as we deal with the lure and sweet smells of soul food which is at once comfort and prison cell. The performance will incorporate dance, monologue and poetry to tell my story and explore the other characters in the performance which are my aunt and grandmother, both deceased at young ages from heart attack, and my mother (still living).