With each artist who read or performed on stage during UnUrban Café’s Velvet Guerilla Cabaret, it was consistently unclear whether he or she was under the influence, mentally impaired, or simply quirky.
Maybe I’m just too uptight for open mic nights anymore. Maybe I can’t handle free artistic expression, or maybe I’m just ““ heaven forbid ““ too judgmental. The cabaret’s emcee openly admitted at the beginning of the show, “There’s so much no judgment here, we’re in a world where sucking is good and good is sucking!” Um, OK.
I understand that everyone has a right to speak their mind, revel in their thoughts and feelings, and reflect upon their experiences with others. It’s not even that I dislike slightly under-the-influence, mentally impaired, or simply quirky people. I’m just irritated when “poetry” is branded as five-minute rants about the government, gender confusion issues, the simultaneously freeing and stifling woes of being a writer, and the nature of the universe.
If UnUrban Café’s regular Wednesday night Velvet Guerilla Cabaret should be classified as anything, it should not be as an open mic or as a poetry reading, but rather as a night of expression. When characters come on stage identifying themselves simply as “Girl” or other one-name monikers, the expectation must be such that these speakers are simply that: speakers. That’s OK.
Fortunately, the setting matches one’s expectations for such an evening. UnUrban Café is an independently owned coffee shop in Santa Monica with turquoise and red walls, mismatched furniture, bookshelves filled with crinkled spine paperbacks, and kooky pieces of paraphernalia, like car parts and unicycles, hanging from the ceiling. Cabaret viewers can settle into rows of red-velvet-lined movie theater chairs or mismatched metal seats or benches that resemble porch swings lining the perimeter of the platform in the corner of the cafe.
Beatniks may not be found at poetry readings anymore, but alternative culture does not necessarily equate to black berets and cigarettes.
An obvious UnUrban regular, 17-year-old “S,” with his key-lime Converse sneakers and tattered notebook sprawled open in his lap, maintained running commentary with the emcee about his changed sex (female to male in case you were wondering), Barack Obama, writing, and his girlfriend (who sat beside him, regularly forcing herself on him for major making out). One man in the audience even had his very own box drum that he pounded periodically during performances when the spirit caught him. This included times when other musicians were on stage playing their own drums.
Most speakers brought their poetry with them on tattered pieces of notebook paper, prefacing each reading with an apology for how bad the writing is. One reader who offered no apologies, however, was “Joey.” Striding on stage with an oversized red sweatshirt, black sweat pants tucked into paint-splattered Ugg boots and bedecked in heavy, clinking, metal Mayan necklaces, and one giant feather-shaped earring weighing down his left ear lobe, Joey informed the audience that he would perform “spoken word.” He proceeded to plant himself center stage, legs spread wide apart, and closed his eyes as he performed, gesticulating wildly throughout and finding the energy to enunciate each letter clearly.
“Manuel” was the evening’s audience favorite, though. A man with bone structure similar to the Hulk and a face craggy with age and perhaps too many cigarettes, flung his trenchcoat over his arms and let the audience know that his jacket, named “Melissa,” would “protect” him from “everyone’s judgment.”
He proceeded to stomp around stage arguing that in order for Barack Obama to be a successful president, he would need to ““ and I won’t repeat the exact way he phrased it here ““ hook up with Beyoncé. Michelle Obama, apparently you’ve got to just suck up the adulterous activity because ““ as Manuel put it ““ every great man has a young, pretty woman to “see” on the side. This, of course, put the audience into utter uproar.
At first, I was torn between simultaneous feelings of disgust and shocked amusement. Then, I realized that in Manuel’s performance is some shocking universal truth. Manuel represents an extreme outpouring of anger and frustration and maybe ““ just maybe ““ there is a little piece of us in all of that.
Maybe that goes for the other performers, too. They may not be poets and they may not even be artists, but they’re a group of wayward souls all looking for a way to find a connection with whoever’s listening. Everyone needs that to a certain extent, and if UnUrban is the place for them to do that, then, well, let them do it. After all, the Velvet Guerrilla Cabaret’s slogan is “Create. Imagine. Explore.” An exploration into some outcast souls defines the cabaret experience.
If you wish open mic nights still involved black berets and cigarettes, contact Cohn at jcohn@media.ucla.edu.