Gómez-Peña performs political satire on campus, leaves things smoking

by Roseanne Wells

Wednesday February 22, 2006

This past Wednesday the Suzanne Werner Wright Theatre filled as audience members anticipated the coming attraction, performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his collaborator Roberto Sifuentes.

Celebrating his 50th birthday by presenting “The Mexorcist: Facing Down Demons and Raising Hell,” Gómez-Peña welcomed the audience with a montage of film clips projecting racial stereotypes and cinematic attraction to exotica.

The doors closed, and after a student introduction by sophmore Adam Nichols, the organizer of the event, the stage lights rose on Gómez-Peña—costumed in decorative cowboy boots, a red feathered headdress, black crinkle skirt and lacy black gloves—walking in circles.

He proceeded to spray aerosol deodorant to the four directions as if part of a Native American ritual. And that was only the beginning.

Moving fluidly between English, Spanish, and vocal patterns, Gómez-Peña created a rhythm all his own. He used his artistic and multifaceted voice to address racial stereotypes, U.S. foreign policy, performance art in America, immigration, his own migration from Mexico to New York, and a slew of other subjects, often changing topics by referring to his black cowboy hat, Star Trek sunglasses, and other bizarre props behind him.

The piece varied in format, changing between lectures, letters to the audience, call and response and general audience participation.

A memorable interaction with individuals in the audience was when he called “God Bless” with the voice of a muezzin calling Muslim worshippers to prayer. The audience responded with countries of the world: Nicaragua, Chile, Thailand, Afghanistan, Guatemala, El Salvador and many others were included in the roll call. Gómez-Peña unexpectedly added France, North Korea, Iran, Iraq and America from his personal list of nations that needed blessings the most.

Throughout the performance, Gómez-Peña made little jabs at socially accepted eccentricities and caught the audience off guard.
When he mocked meditation by using specialized breathing patterns to smoke a cigarette on stage, most of the audience was alternately in disbelief at his audacity and stitches at his accurate imitation.

Poking fun at pretentious performance art, he asked, “How many performance artists does it take to change a light bulb?” The response? “I don’t know, I left after the third hour.”
After talking about the political situation in America, he apologized for anyone who might get in trouble and proceeded to smoke a joint.

His exploration of the plight of performance artists, American politics and racial issues was amusing at times and unbalancing at others, but did not induce introspection as might have been hoped. During his political commentary, he said that the “citizenry is sleeping” but did not supply an answer to awaken the masses.
Despite his minor shortcomings most of the audience leaped to their feet in recognition of his ideals and performance.

Gómez-Peña himself described the evening most aptly when he said, “The only difference between a madman and a performance artist is a performance artist has an audience, so thank you.”