Photography by Brian Rogers
The Future Was Looking Better In The Past
A new show by Rebecca Patek at The Chocolate Factory
GAYLETTER last spoke with “Dancer and Lover of Sperm” Rebecca Patek during 2013, in an interview of the same name. After spending the afternoon researching and chatting with her, my crush on Rebecca is so intense that as a gay man I’m uncomfortable. But then, discomfort is what Patek usually serves — take her 2013 show Inter(a)nal f/ear, a blisteringly funny satirical dance-and-multimedia performance exploring her experience of being raped, or her newest piece, The Future Was Looking Better In The Past, running from May 20th to May 23rd at The Chocolate Factory.
The unnerving subject at the center of “Future…” is the “Leopold and Loeb” murders. Remember those? It was that one time in 1924 when super hot, super rich teenage homos Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb gave America the “trial of the century” when they murdered 14-year old fellow trust fund kid Bobby Franks with a chisel because, like, Friedrich Nietzsche and #übermensch and “just for kicks” really. Funny thing is — and in Patek’s sly hands it WILL be funny, whether we like it or not — both murderer Loeb and victim Franks were Rebecca’s cousins on her father’s side.
“I found out about the connection two years ago, and got obsessed with it,” Patek says. “The idea of exploring ‘tainted blood’ started as kind of joke, but then you do start to think about these family strains, and look for repeating patterns, and there’s something eerie about it.”
Do your family members have feelings about you doing this piece? “Well my dad plays the voice of the defense attorney, and my mom wrote the music for it, but they haven’t seen it…they just sent me the materials without seeing the work. In fact they’ve never seen any of my work before so….” She laughs.
To hear Rebecca describe her signature equation of dance+shame and violence+satire makes the singular sound simple. “Satire means that you can get at grey areas more easily….the way language can be violent, for example, the way we read each other physically, the more subtle forms of violence and manipulation. But these power dynamics…can be shown in the body. You can use the body in the same way.” Listening to this elegant explanation while staring at a picture of her face covered in cum, I ask Patek if she’s into S&M. “My work has in the past gone to the level of public humiliation that could be called psychological S&M, yeah there’s something there…hmm…” she trails off, and I sink into my seat, smitten.
Since Patek devised and choreographed “Future” but, for the first time in her career, isn’t performing in it (though the cast does feature talented GAYLETTER favorites Sam Roeck and Chris Tyler joined by John Hoobyar, Sheila Lewandowski, David Patek, Peter Mills Weiss and Jaime Wright) — she may have to find that thrill of abjection somewhere other than the stage…..although perhaps sitting next to her parents while they encounter her work for the first time in this twisted tale of family depravity could be masochistic enough.
