now i don't relish having beer cans thrown at me, especially with a camera in my hand, which i'm constantly covering with my straw bonnet. a friend of the lead singer, johnny rotten, in the seat next to me, and of course, he ultimately has the booze running down his face, as rotten peppers him with cans and dowses him in alcohol.
the artistic director had asked the audience to keep it calm for the cameras. that seemed to unleash even more shouts and missiles, the theme of the show basically fuck you! in this punk epic, 'sid & nancy'. actually, i'm not sure what it is all about. the foam earplugs cancel most of the dialogue and i never can understand the lyrics of songs. plus, i'm clicking and flashing away.
obviously, sid has a fatal attraction to nancy, and nancy keeps bouncing back from any rebuffs. looking at the pics www.pbase.com/wwp/sn you can sense the visceral impact. if a show well-directed, the visuals tell the whole story. i figured the director, martin chavira, must be a lapsed catholic. characters in his shows love to destroy themselves, as well as buildings. sid revives from his own death at the end to sing and fire a forty-five into the audience.
all this could have been completely false and lackluster, yet this production sucked me in (and spit me out). afterwards i just wanted to escape with my life and my pictures. the next morning the evening's memory depressed me. yet as i worked on the photos over the next three days, i gradually felt a thrill. this no ordinary endeavor.
after all, sitting in the front row, i got raped by sid's electric base. another time he nearly fell on me as he lurched around the stage in a drug-induced state, grabbing my foot to save himself. how and where they managed to draw the line, i don't know. they did, and that the ultimate art. another night they might cause a riot. we'll see as they go on the road.
again: www.pbase.com/wwp/sn
and the theater: www.blueroomtheatre.com
