Another review of Julie Patton’s BathHouse reading, this time by Thom Boersma:
A diminutive figure stands in an auditorium, an ant dressed in human guise, and this ant terraforms the auditorium simply through sonic endeavors. This ant scats and slithers, builds and destroys, creates sonic dissonance and assonance all under the cover of darkness, and subtle strumming strings provided by some mellow background guitar. This ant is Julie Patton, she astonishes in a way that is both subtle and quiet, and a way that is bombastic and electrifying. Patton performs with a natural relevance, pulling from audience, ambiance, and a veritable Pandora’s Box of poetic trickery.
Patton combines her own works, with the scatterings and smatterings of work splayed out across the stage. She uses sounds upon sounds, and the repetition of those sounds and new sounds to create an atmosphere both poetic and wholly original. While one part sounds like the next, the same part sounds like nothing that has come before it. The movements are kinetic and original, drawing on the electricity of the room and building block after block upon one another. It is fair to say, that while the act was rehearsed, no one performance will be like the performance that came before it.
Patton uses her own words, which are haphazardly held together with ties made of Dr. Seuss, musical interludes, and claims of visual impairment. Julie Patton screams and whispers her way through a variety of performance pieces, combining old school Green Eggs and Ham with new school political mockery. Patton combines sexuality with the earth, dirt and love, flowers, insects, colors, race, and gender, into a performance that steps past the realm of anything normally considered poetry.
The culmination of the piece comes when a seemingly endless stream of simplistic instruments emerge from the basket on stage. One instrument after the other makes its presence known on stage, and then retreats to the hands of some unsuspecting audience member. These audience members pound, shake, and continue to create as more instruments surface, following suit with their fellow escapees. When it seems that Julie Patton has had enough, she calls out to the instruments to return to the stage, and continue “musicing” in unison.
Patton is not just a woman, not just an ant under the artifice of artist, Julie Patton is the performance. Julie Patton takes the realm of poetry and stretches it into the dimension of nature, into the dimension of sound, and then steps on it, smearing into a paste that shares the characteristics of everything she wants it to be. To enter into a performance by Julie Patton expecting anything, is to expect what naturally occurs: chaos.