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Rae C. Wright, Eco-Artist
By Lillian Ann Slugocki
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Photo courtesy of Rae C. Wright |
Rae C. Wright is a New York-based actress, writer, director and performance artist whose work sheds light on subterranean themes, including animal abuse, cruelty, hypocrisy, and the industry that makes its living from human death. Her work includes a send up of Vogue magazine editor and fur aficionado Anna Wintour in a red bathtub filled with mock blood and "She's Just Away," about her dealings with morticians, cremators and others after the death of her mother. Wright teaches in the Film Department at New York University, has directed for the New York Shakespeare Public Theatre, and is a longtime partner of the Massachusetts-based anti-nuclear organization, Citizens Awareness Network (CAN). Her new work, "Animal Instincts: Tales of Flesh and Tales of Blood" will have a three-week run in New York City this month. Lillian Ann Slugocki recently spoke with Wright about her work.
Q: Why are you an artist and an actor in particular?
A: I've always felt that I had no choice.
It's what I'm bound to do. It's my right work, my dharma if you will.
I've being doing this all my life, and this is my life.
Q: What exactly does it mean to be an "activist-artist"?
A: I've witnessed what theatre can mean
to people, to communicate on a spiritual level, on an emotional level.
In a sense, all theatre is political. There is a message in each and every
image that we take in, and the way it affects us is political. There are
messages in each episode of a sitcom, in a soap opera: "this is what women
are," "this is what happiness," And it's not that Mobil Oil brings us
Channel 13, it's that Channel 13 brings us to Mobil Oil.
Q: Do you believe that art can create change?
A: Art is love, work, sweat and tears,
truth and faith, God's stuff. I believe it's denial that burdens us --
sometimes more than we know -- and that the truth frees us. The truth
sometimes is a drag, infuriating or painful. And sometimes, of course,
it's a relief.
Q: How would you characterize your work?
A: Oh, twisted! Someone I admire very
much recently saw something I did and came up afterward and said, "You
are so...twisted," and I felt so flattered. I'm interested, compelled
to see into things. Cruelty interests me -- my own, and my species'.
"Animal Instincts: Tales of Flesh and Tales of Blood" previews March 31 and will run Thursdays to Saturdays April 4 through April 19 at Dixon Place, 258 Bowery (1/2 a block below Houston). For reservations, call: 212-219-3088. New York University students can get in at half price.
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