Glenna Stearman Park, Art as a Force for Social Change

Glenna Stearman Park

Editor’s Note: Glenna Stearman Park’s artistic creations  focus at times on being female, a theme she explores in a variety of media. The three pieces here – a play, a dance performance, and a drawing – combine art forms with religion, biology, family life, nudity, and politics to deploy art as a force for change. Sometimes, Glenna’s art is deliberately provocative, even outrageous, pushing audiences to think through issues of, as she says, “this gender nonsense.”

A Little Talk With God

This performance,  A Little Talk with God, was presented at the College Art Association national meeting in 1995. For 10 years, I was a member of Jumpstart Performance Company in San Antonio, Texas. I was interested in the Biblical and biological constraints on women which I addressed in this theater piece.  

The stage was set with a table and chair and a ladder nearby.  Actor Sterling Houston, dressed in a black robe, sat on top of the ladder reading from a black book.  A spotlight was on him.  I entered the scene carrying two full grocery bags and flopped down on the chair in exhaustion, dropping the bags on the floor!  

God, on the ladder, loudly and firmly ordered, “Get off that chair.”  I stayed on the chair and turned around to him and fussed about why I had to get off the chair.  “I am tired!  I did all this shopping.”

God stood and started down the ladder as he slowly and clearly read from his black book, “Leviticus 15,  When a woman has a discharge of blood which is regular  discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening.  And everything upon which she lies during her impurity shall be unclean; everything UPON WHICH SHE SITS shall be unclean.” He went on, “It’s right here in the book!”

I answered that I was sick and tired of being blamed for my biological functions, and that I was not going to take it anymore!  God shook his head and repeated the line “everything UPON WHICH SHE SITS shall be unclean.”  I jumped up off the chair as I grabbed the grocery bags and dumped out large packages of Stay Free Maxi Pads, ripped them open and pulled the wrappers off while I madly stuck the maxi pads all over the chair, table, and floor.  God came closer to inspect my work, as he shook his head disapprovingly.  

Then God read from his book again, “But if she is cleansed of her discharge, and after that she shall be clean.  And on the eighth day she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons and bring them to the priest, to the door of the tent meeting, and the priest shall offer one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her before the Lord for her unclean discharge.”

I kept muttering, “It’s biology!”

Then I turned toward God and said, “I am sick of cooking for you!  Every month I have to fix those damn birds.  And I even roasted three lambs when each of my boys were born!  I‘m done!  NO more!  You’ve had your last free lunch!  For old time’s sake, I am willing to take you down the street for tacos, but that’s it!  I am not apologizing anymore!”

God closed his book and said, “Well, I like tacos, refried beans, and rice.” And we walked off stage.   THE END

I Feel a Story Coming On

One Saturday night at Jumpstart, the lights came up with me on top of a tall wooden ladder, holding a large hand-made paper bowl.  I said, “Let there be light,” and Max, our lighting designer, spotlighted my halo-like white hair in the darkened theater.  Then I called for the firmament, and Max turned on the fog machines.  Music from The Killing Fields played softly. 

Next, I told the audience that I was bored so I created people, and slowly ballet dancers moved onto the stage in modern free-form patterns — in and out of the diminishing firmament.   I looked down on my creation and said I needed more. At that point, I started tossing nerf balls to the dancers who had velcro pelvic and boob patches on their body suits. They had to catch the balls using only their velcro, which emphasized an angular awkward movement to the dance.  I had told the dancers that God would pass out their balls. 

Some had only boob balls, some had multiple pelvic nerf balls.  Then, of course, others had multiple configurations of boob and pelvic balls.  The music morphed into Mozart, and the dancers moved into more traditional ballet in pairs of boobs and pelvic balls, boobs with boobs, pelvic with pelvic, and ménage a trois of multiple configurations.  And God was pleased.  STAGE BLACK

Bawdy Sculpting