A whimsical, yet provocative, yet secular yet prophetic yet cavalier yet dead serious theatre piece inspired by the Greil Marcus book of the same name: Lipstick Traces (A Secret History of the 20th Century) presents events from roughly 1534 (the naked, anti-capitalist anarchy of John of Leydon) to April 2010 and the death of Malcolm McLaren. McLaren, an impresario who produced The Sex Pistols (a band that rejected capitalism) ironically made them his cash cow. Put another way, he enabled an artistic, philosophical, musical anarchy that characterized culture and conversation in 1975. Greil Marcus tracked parallel incidents and eccentric, albeit earnest movements and ideologies, ignored in the mainstream of popular belief. These were pervasively influential, yet barely noticed ideas, in the grand scheme of humanity. That nonetheless had their impact. Their moment.
Created by Rude Mechanicals in Austin, Texas, conceived and directed by Shawn Sides, adapted from the book by Kirk Lynn, Lipstick Traces premiered in 2000. Featuring Dr. Narrator, Johnny Rotten of The Sex Pistols and Malcolm McLaren, Lipstick Traces, bravely, kinetically, cynically AND sincerely plows a plenitude of content, without breaking a sweat. Greil Marcus explores the synchronicity of declarations, protests, spontaneous artistic assertions, musical violations, the transcendence of attitude and casual observations, both enormous and minuscule. Roughly, the common thread might be questioning: religion, authority, money, acquisition, reliable truth, law and propriety.
Lipstick Traces is never boring. It pitches (as lecture) subversive elements throughout Western Civilization. There’s tension between Dr. Narrator, Malcolm McLaren and Johnny Rotten. Wrestling for the microphone, if you will. Lipstick Traces is chock full of rebellion in various manifestations; the 1950 Easter Mass at Notre Dame, disrupted to declare God was dead, the prophetic graffiti and blank screen films of Guy Debord, the Student and Workers riots of 1968, the Cabaret Voltaire, the nightclub and launchpad for the DaDa movement. Writers, social critics, artists, philosophers, heretics. It’s a cosmic montage told with rants, gestures, sneers, projections, slides, reenactments, declarations, dances that are: jaunty and frantic, slow, comic, romantic. There’s a good faith effort to be as inclusive as possible, from scrap to manifesto to heckling to taunt to fury to jeremiad to wholesale dismissal.
I’m never disappointed to see an Outcry Theatre performance. They push, they strive, they dig to engage the intellectual, imaginative, intuitive, fanciful. The shadow. We guffaw, we wail, we gasp, we swoon, we pinch ourselves. Evincing a piece like Lipstick Traces could have been a nightmare, but you’d never know from this sublime, chaotic, defiant performance. I know I’m tripping on adjectives, but need to do justice to this remarkable theatre troupe, and this cyclonic piece in particular. Outcry captures the dream of a crucial, fearless, surreal, intoxicating theatre that longs to seduce our senses. To crack the universe like an egg.
Outcry Theatre presented Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century: based on the book of the same name by Greil Marcus. It played from May 26-29th, 2022. Studio Theatre of Addison Conference and Theatre Centre. 15650 Addison Road, Addison, Texas 75001. (972) 836-7206. outcrytheare.com
Lipstick Traces closed May 26th, 2022.