EMU student Vanessa Janowski reviews Julie Patton’s recent BathHouse reading:
On November 9th, 2010, Julie Patton performed for a one-night show at the Sponberg Theater at 6:30pm. I was unexpected as to what I would be seeing, since I have only read one piece of Patton’s writing. She is a sound poet, vocalist, and musicologist. She is known as the sight and sound makeup artist. Patton entered the theater and I was looking forward to a good performance. Her performance included stretched out and exaggerated words to tell a story, with musical instruments playing. Unlike other performances and speakers that I’ve seen, Patton moved around quite a lot throughout her performance. She started off standing in front of the microphone, then she backed up and leaned against the stage ledge, then she sat on the floor. It was clear that she wanted to really feel her writing piece, rather than just verbally say it out loud. She eventually landed on the ground, lying there reading her mixed up papers through the mic. Patton mixes speaking with singing. Towards the end of her performance, she passed out musical instruments to random audience members and had them make music. She did this to prove that anyone can be a part of and make music. Her performance was one of the most unique and interesting shows I have seen as relating to a speaker performing his/her’s work. I really enjoyed it.