Karen Finley

Love, liza: Karen Finley (left), with Lance Cruce and Chris Tanner, uses Liza Minnelli iconography in her 9/11-influenced work, Make Love. Q&A: Karen Finley

Interview by A.D. Amorosi

Forget about the NEA and Jesse Helms. Forget about fruits and vegetables. Forget about Karen Finley altogether. That’s the point of Finley, the 47-year-old godmother of performance art, taking on the persona of Liza Minnelli for her cabaret performance Make Love. With a cast dressed as the many faces of Minnelli, Finley -- despite occasional rantings against 9/11-based patriotic rhetoric -- seeks to place a balm on the wound of post-tragedy New York City, to show off the irrepressible spirit of a city that never sleeps in the context of a woman who’s faced her own public heartbreaks. What better tower of strength and showbiz is there than Liza, who, like Finley’s Make Love, is dedicated to the rich iconography of drag and queer theater.

City Paper: You played the precursor to Make Love, The Distribution of Empathy, in Philadelphia. How did we take to the tragedy of 9/11, in comparison to other cities where you did Empathy?

Karen Finley: I think your proximity made it so that they cared about the tragedy more than other markets. I think other cities felt guilty or held other emotional options available to them. Philadelphia, too, has a sophisticated sense of black humor in viewing material like this. But in other parts of the country they couldn't deal with me, Karen Finley, talking about the tragedy. That's why you're hearing it from Liza -- and the drag queens and kings doing her. It's easier. America is one big reality show.

CP: But Liza -- despite the dynamism of her being a woman who, like New York, has survived and persisted in the face of trouble after trouble -- is not the most comforting presence. She's a pretty shaky character. Why her?

KF: Along with me having waited on her when I was a waitress, I've seen her, up close and through the media, as this city. I think she's fused to her mother by her voice and her history. We can relate to that. Plus, she's almost in drag. She has relationships with gay men, both close and as icon. She's as big as her talent. She has to live with that talent, that mother, her trauma -- yet she gets up and goes to work whether she's in or out of the program. I relate to a lot of Liza's psychopathology.

CP: That's much like your talent, a legend that looms larger and more notoriously than you -- one that can distract an audience from your message or your work at hand.

KF: Correct. Or I'm not large enough for the material I'm dealing with. Karen Finley got in the way -- the archetype of who I am living through my causes. Audiences -- whether it's gay rights or the NEA -- live through my victimization. Only, in this piece, I'm not a victim. "Karen Finley" is angry at this audience. And audiences would get angry at "Karen Finley" because the character wasn't empathetic. They couldn't live through any of my usual victimization. They didn't have a [multilayered understanding] of me versus the character. They wanted me to want their love and empathy. That's why I used "Liza."

CP: Like many others, I've witnessed you through a hundred different performances. Is it wrong for me or any audience member to simply take you at face value in regard to each new piece? Do we miss something?

KF: I think in terms of the cultural Rorschach, I'm either demonized as Medea or made into Joan of Arc, serving the audience's purposes toward their own emotional needs. It just happens.

CP: What links to queer theater's history -- and why -- do you think you've made with Make Love?

KF: There's a sentimentality I found toward fusing with a queer construction in theater. I love camp and cabaret for show-business reasons. The artificial away-from-naturalness is an approach I've embraced here because, after 9/11, the naturalness of the depth of emotion is too much for the psyche. Using "the musical" or "drag" -- or fusing with the "female" -- relieves anxiety. It just does, for me and for the audience. It allows you to displace the emotion.

Karen Finley performs Make Love, Fri., March 19, 7:30 and 10 p.m., $20, The Five Spot, 5 S. Bank St., 215-545-4844, www.directfromnyc.com.