Documents of the Fifth Surreal Cabaret

1. press release (in fact acts numbered 2 and 8-11 did not appear due to snowfall the day of the event)


Surreal Cabaret in Sugar Loaf – One Night Only!

The fifth Surreal Cabaret will be presented at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, January 3 at the Seligmann Studio, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf. Admission is free. The event will feature a series of short performances by local artists produced by Steve Roe with the assistance of William Seaton.

Acts may cross genres, mixing poetry, drama, dance, and music, while featuring conceptual play, experimentation, and improvisation. Several projection screens will provide a variety of visual stimulation in an environment of new word patterns, sounds never heard before, and suggestive theatrical gestures.

The event is part of an ongoing series of exhibits, readings, lectures, and workshops presented by the Seligmann Center for the Arts. Kurt Seligmann was a Surrealist artist who lived in Sugar Loaf, and the Center offers a rare Hudson Valley venue for avant-garde painters, writers, and performers.

This particular show, titled “On Thin Ice,” will memorialize Seligmann’s death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, deemed to be accidental, on January 2, 1962. The extraordinary program, involving a wide circle of performance artists in the region, is detailed below.

For further information contact William Seaton at seaton@frontiernet.net or Steve Roe at sroe33@optonline.net . See www.kurtseligmann.org for details on other programs.

1. The program opens with a benediction from Surrealist chaplain Lama Swine Toil.
2. The Surreal Cabaret house band Mr. Sexy and the Hot Chicks warms up the audience.
3. “Lamp,” inspired by 1964 lamp subculture and other new wave consumerism is staged.
4. Spreaders offers “SoftError\\\drenched electronics::: damaged cassette loop junk media disruptions.”
5. “Dada Frolic” features Dan & Detta Andreana- speaking in their native tongue (Jibberish) and making sound art on the Bow Box and The Micasonic String Board.
6. William Seaton and the voice of Patricia Seaton alert the audience to “The Metaphysics of Everyday Life.”
7. Steve Roe performs “I Am Strange,” a work inspired by the work of Sun Ra.
8. The New York Pop Conceptualists, featuring Julie Mejia on bass, synthesizer, and vocals and Matt Luczak on drums, create “a response to the event itself.”
9. “Caution Horses,” from Jeffery Justin Van Dunk, is an experimental audio visual performance.
10. Jonas Bers offers an “abstract audiovisual improvisation using handmade electronics and modified consumer equipment to produce projected images and corresponding sound.”
11. The “23rd Toad Psalm” by the Orchestra de Fou, a long standing noise orchestra led by Dr. George Omara, with the assistance of members of Ohms of Resistance and Council of (Poetic) Experimentation will close out the evening.
For further information contact Steve Roe at sroe33@optonline.net or William Seaton at seaton@frontiernet.net. See www.kurtseligmann.org for details on other programs.


2. posters by Steve Roe

3. The Lineage of the Lama Swine Toil

I am the Lama Swine Toil and, like each of you, though singular, I am not alone.

I knew the divine madman Gundam Raul who played with Vishnu in the temple babbling and sticking his fingers in the statue’s mouth: “he’ll bite, he won’t bite, he’ll laugh, no he won’t, he’ll talk, but be silent”

And my neighbor next door is that Christ of the Gospel of Thomas who warned that buyers and merchants could not enter the kingdom and said to dance naked and unashamed, trampling on one’s clothes once and for all.

I am descended from Shi de, whose janitor’s broom swept his own mind clean, wiser than all the learned monks at the Guoqing Temple

And the illiterate Huineng who was delivering firewood when enlightened and who stole away in the night to avoid the envious when he was named Sixth Patriarch

I am at one with Muhammed who cut the sleeve of his robe to avoid disturbing his dear cat Muezza who slept and later the cat bowed to him in thanks as my own latter day cats have been known to do.

I revere the memory of the great Ji Gong who crazy and drunk was expelled from his monastery and thereafter practiced compassion in wine shops and low dives up and down the dusty streets crowded with suffering souls.

And in France my brother, the tumbler of Our Lady outshone the learned monks when he leaped and danced in love before the altar and heaven’s queen found his offering most sweet.

Not a hair’s breadth separates me from Johannes Tauler who knew Mechthild’s Flowing Light and knew as prophets and physicists alike will say that all without exception returns in the end to the source.

I am cousin, so I think, to Zhuang Zi who preferred his “filthy ditch” to the sovereign’s court and said, “I have determined never to take office, but prefer the enjoyment of my own free will."

I would scratch Diogenes that dog upon his hoary head, Diogenes who when he saw the shepherd boy drink from his own hand, then tossed away his begging bowl and said, “Fool that I am, to have been carrying superfluous baggage all this time.”

I strain my ears to hear the strain that came one night to that most annoying lady Margery Kempe as she lay with her husband in bed and “herd a sownd of melodye so swet and delectable, hir thowt, as sche had ben in paradyse.”

I think of dear Ikkyu who was brilliant with his flute entered brothels in his monastic robes and insisted his time with pavilion girls deepened his enlightenment.

I am as one with Hakuin Ekaku who, when asked about the afterlife, said, “Why should I know?” and when the questioner cried out, “You are a great teacher!” replied, “Yes, but not a dead one.”

Xuefeng Yicun tells all we need to know: “The Buddha is a bull-headed jail-keeper and the Patriarchs are horse-faced old maids!”



4. a further fit of "The Metaphysics of Everyday Life"

And a birth releases widening waves rolling fugue-like in four dimensions or more throughout fields known and fields awaiting a viewer and further yet where sight is unnecessary altogether;

For a death as well makes waves of an inverse character but no less graceful and potent, and were some gifted eyes to view from time’s back end they would see the end as the start spelled backwards, though the symmetry escapes us now,

And just as the truth of a birth is concealed behind jubilation that, in spite of mortality, we are keeping abreast of the game through efforts strenuous and strongly felt through the entire human race,

So the truth of a death is folded in self-pity and vain attempt to grasp at the straws that felt the summer sun so many years ago and, though we knew this moment was coming, we were nonetheless hard hit.

And we wept not for the departed but for ourselves, and not for our loss and raw loneliness torn open but as well for our own death lurking in a distant hallway awaiting most patiently our approach ever closer past the dusty doors of abandoned offices until we come upon it all at once.

For to be immortal would be like being of infinite height and would surely prove an inconvenience and hardly a thing to be wished for though it is true that one’s finiteness does not always seem to fit even after squirming and stretching!

And great flares of transformation arise and stars pass out of existence in the blooms of supernovae and think quiet afterthoughts of cosmic rays, world without end,

For there is always a further readjustment to be sought whether in the passing of stormy galactic clouds or some sac of eggs suspended in swampy water, restless and wriggling, or patterns of pencil marks on paper, and things never come wholly to rest.

And what Socrates called wind-eggs may not be without value in the end, for the church and the film industry and indeed all the advertisers likewise trade in images, and enjoy good custom indeed, though poets may go begging.

For liberation as well as manacles must be mind-forged, though the meadow breeze in one’s hair is none the less palpable for that, nor the dizzying sight from the peak, and we must be glad of our bargains and catch them where we may.

And the sum of all things is precisely nothing at all, when positive charges meet negative and matter meets antimatter and finds annihilation perfect and sweet and a most elegant end,

For we can only think that the primary concerns of the kosmos are aesthetic in spite of baryon asymmetry and other pebbles of ignorance that cramp our walk and give us blisters;

And Kurt Seligmann has gone off to join the many, for a single slip on a January morning may overpower a legion of intentions and halt the burgeoning of a host of futures each full of fresh promise,

For like him it is all we can do to pursue the vermin that annoy and the nightmares that trouble our sleep and the furtive darting threats that circle about seeking to gain advantage in this imperfect light.

And we can only breathe together and think of him and gaze each other in the eye and know we walk also a path that can only end in drama and alarm.

For the pot will continue to boil and sometimes to boil over and sometimes to simmer and in it the currents are drifting describing lovely patterns that never repeat and the dance cannot come to rest and in this it is like feet when the music plays.

Annual Report

The following is a routine composed for a Council of (Poetic) Experimentation event marking the centenary year of the birth of William Burroughs and scheduled close to the seventeenth anniversary of his death. CO(P)E has proven the most productive venue of cutting-edge performance in this region, staging new as well as older avant-garde work thanks to the work of Steve Roe, Dan Andreana, Al Margolis, Kevin Geraghty, and Detta Andreana.


     I am pleased to address the members of the board of directors, our corporate executives, and even you small fry shareholders and hangers-on, and to announce to you another banner year for the Amalgamated Consolidated Holding Company, the ever-swelling big daddy of the NYSE, compared to which yesterday’s multinationals are mere pikers. Our prodigious growth has been continuous since we decided to cut out the middle term in merchandising. Why sell people a product promising pleasure when we might instead market pleasure itself? We realized that the Christers had been making millions for millennia with a simple verbal promise of eternal bliss marketed with just enough mumbo-jumbo to hook the chumps. What would the profit be for the provider that could actually deliver bliss metered and invoiced? Advertisers had used hit-and-miss psychology crap – we went straight to the far more dependable biology.
     A bit of history may be useful for new employees. We proceeded from the historic experiments of Olds and Milner which established the territory of the pleasure center in the hitherto untracked regions of the nucleus accumbens. Inspired by the image of their rats frantically pressing the neural reward bar Delgado, Heath and others then extended that work to human subjects. Using prisoners at first, they moved fearlessly into new frontiers, the ventral pallidum and the orbitofrontal cortex, leading to the culminating stage of science, the very jewel of civilization and crown of creation: the hugely profit-making corporation. Our patented process implants neural electrodes into customers adjudged Class B material by our underwriters who have discovered either approved credit lines or exploitable productive capacity and then who then provide first-rate medical supervision for our clients’ twilight years.
     Many Class Bs, of course, proved weak-minded, “auto-culls” we call them. Having thought they could joy-pop along for a spell, just taking a week-end zap or two and maybe an extra when feeling low, but before long they were stretched out in one of our hostels, paying hotel rates for a shelf in a room with thousands of their fellows, catheterized, with IVs and bags of various organic fluids, both intake and outgo, hanging all over the place. The minimum wage workers we hire, those, that is, from Class D, without sufficient economic resources to be our customers become our agents in what is popularly called The House of the Lame-os, but unfortunately they can’t possibly cope. The more enterprising, dubbing themselves “forty-niners,” specialize in digging out gold dental work, for they know we can’t be bothered about such petty pilferage. Eventually they wheel the corpses to the back wall where the stench never stops. But we need to keep a heartbeat going until the assets and credit are maxed out.
     We have overcome the looming problem of a labor shortage for the production of our own commodities. After years of research by our own Dr. Ungeheuer we developed the precise balance of positive and negative stimulation needed to maintain a functioning production worker. This proprietary algorithm for managing Class C individuals is presently our most valuable intellectual asset. A stream of stimuli, mixing shocks of pain with waves of bliss will keep the subject functioning for a sixteen-hour workday. At a stroke we have eliminated much of the unnecessary cost of labor. Our industrial employees need no clothing or home. Seated on a chamber pot, they are nourished by a wholesome vegan diet administered with computer-controlled technology purchased from the foie gras folks.
     We do face challenges in the coming fiscal year. They are pesky bands of hooligans throwing monkey wrenches in sectors 19 and 24, pestilence has swept sectors 9 through 12 to the extent that their territory must be quarantined from all decent society, and the vicious and godless Chinese conglomerate is expected next to turn against us, having already transformed the U.K. into an island of their own drones following the karmically inevitable second Opium War in which daily doses of the drug were forced into every Briton until they capitulated begging for more. We shall rise to meet these difficulties as we have done in the past, using any means necessary to accomplish our mission, for we are the defenders of civilization. You may rest assured that, were Jesus, the real Jesus, not a turn-your-cheek namby-pamby, alive today, he would be a shareholder, a major shareholder, I have no doubt.
     And now, I see the hors d’oeuvres are coming – I invite you all to enjoy your dinners, in the confident knowledge that these luxurious dishes are an alchemical transmutation, compounded of the blood, sweat, and tears of our natural inferiors according to God’s holy plan. Our success is the proof that Providence stands with us in the tireless pursuit of profit.

Documents of the fourth Surreal Cabaret

1. the announcement

Fourth Surreal Cabaret at the Seligmann Center
The fourth Surreal Cabaret, featuring performance art, multi-media, and other avant-garde techniques will be presented at 7:30 on Friday, June 13 in the Kurt Seligmann Studio, 23 White Oak Drive, Sugar Loaf. The event is free and open to the public.

The program will open as usual with a benediction from the Surrealist chaplain, the Lama Swine Toil. Music will be provided by the New Jersey experimental ensemble ArtCrime. Acts include a rap by Anne Hanson, the Council of (Poetic) Experimentation doing “Genet Discordia,” William Seaton’s “Party,” and Susanna Rich singing two songs from her one-woman musical Shakespeare’s *itches: the Musical.

The Cabarets provide a rare opportunity for Hudson Valley residents to see exciting new work by area artists using cutting edge practices. “We pay tribute to Surrealist Kurt Seligmann in a way I suspect he would have approved – by showcasing new vision.” says producer William Seaton.

As in the past artist David Horton has created a poster for the Cabaret.


2. the program

Lama Swine Toil "Benediction"
The Surrealist chaplain will seek to save the lost and to convince the saved to lose themselves.

CO(P)E "Genet Discordia/Bird of Paradise"
Featuring Steve Roe’s voice, Dan Andreana’s video, Al Margolis, Kevin Geraghty, and Detta Andreana on sound. The Council of (Poetic) Experimentation is an art collective dedicated to the performance and publication of experimental works. Their most recent publication is War Stories.

Anne Hanson "The Panther and the Butterfly"
A poem transformed into a rap, sort of falling between the two. Anne Hanson is known to Hudson Valley audiences as a poet and storyteller.

William Seaton "Party"
Unspoken conversations, the subterranean levels of a social gathering, find utterance. Actors are Ingrid King, Jim Kenny, & Patricia Seaton. William Seaton is the producer of the Surreal Cabarets. He maintains a blog at williamseaton.blogspot.com.

Susanna Rich "Nicole's Song"
This song from the one-woman show Shakespeare’s *itches marks the twentieth anniversary of Nicole Brown Simpson's death.

"Kate Explains"
Also from Shakespeare’s *itches, Kate the Shrew as a contemporary bartender. For more information on Susanna Rich’s performances, books, and other activities see susannarich.com or wildnightsproductions.com.

ArtCrime Music
John Korchok, Steve Orbach, and Bob Siebert perform as ArtCrime, New Jersey’s outstanding experimental ensemble. With backgrounds in jazz, rock, and experimental music, the instrumentalists of ArtCrime create entirely new, often improvisatory music. See http://www.art-crime.net/.


3. the poster by David Horton

4. the words of the Lama Swine Toil

The Parable of the not-OK Corral
He walked the dusty, sun-baked streets of a town
on the far frontier of metaphysics.
His faithful Indian companion whispered sutras in his ear.
The townspeople hustled off to shelter behind the nearest received ideas.
The tumbleweeds blew, and the buzzards cried out wise suggestions ,
but he never heard and just stared straight ahead.
At the street’s opposite end, walking slowly toward him, was his enemy,
his brother, his mirror-image.
(And the town’s pretty schoolmarm walked an identical street
at that very moment, facing a Doppelgänger of her own,
her foot like his poised seeking the next step,
and neither could help it at all.)
The sweat dripped down his cheek.
The Avidya Boys, he knew, were crouching in doorways,
leaning from second-story windows,
and the gang from the Hungry Ghost Ranch,
covered him from every angle.
The clock ticked on toward the highest of high noons
when time, that old codger, will expire, as did Gabby Hayes in 1969.
Suddenly he heard from behind the voice of the kosmos, deep and unmistakable,
“Drop your ego on the ground right there, I’ve got you covered. “
And he knew the jig was finally up.

5. Party

To be performed by four actors, dispersed throughout the room. The lights should be out as the monologues are unspoken. Art the Cabaret performance, the audience was told they might close their eyes.

Party
I.
1st speaker: How can it be that everyone is talking to someone with the sole exception of me. I can hardly continue staring at the book titles much longer. Oh, how to assume an insouciant air as I sit outside the gate, listening to the self-satisfied buzz of all the drones? I sit discomfited on rocks, so harsh a seat alone, a tragic pariah, unrecognized, unappreciated, like the finest of apples, too high on the tree, pecked by mindless birds, exposed to wind and rain and merciless fate. The fallen apple is more fortunate, its crisis past, the quick hurtle to meet earth over.

2nd speaker: All is well just now. I think. My dyspepsia has subsided, my portfolio has gained twenty percent this year and yet I haven’t gained more than ten percent in weight. Last time I saw my doctor he said he saw no problems, but that was two weeks ago and I failed to point out that weird blemish in my armpit which online research has indicated could be the sign of any number of serious conditions. Then, too, even darker possibilities may lurk in the bushes, ready to leap like a fierce and mocking panther. My balance sheet will be powerless then. My successful lawsuit will mean nothing. I can only imagine the leap of the predator who is surely there,, the sudden sharp full-body alarm. I can only imagine it again and again until the thought is worse than the reality.

3rd speaker: Oh, god, I haven’t the slightest idea what she has been saying for the past five minutes. It looks like I’m cued to respond. I have perhaps two seconds to devise the best strategy. I am on the edge of a high cliff and I see the rocks below. Vertigo seizes me. Oh, that I might buzz like a fly to the further reaches of the room. Lord, lord, what does that look mean? I am pinned in an album, classified and dessicated, without recourse, but perhaps that is only right. This day, another damp and ruined space of time, to be discarded like a used tissue, capable of inspiring only disgust.

4th speaker: light in room’s corner, groan of outside autos, tremor in the skull, graceful neck flesh incline curve of thigh shaking of a comely arm eruption of energies heading toward a brick wall hurtling on to whammo collision dizzy soft knee whew take a long breath wine rises to brain already fogged by error confusion and willful refusal to see to feel to ----? Buzz of anger yesterday at the bus stop what was the look about? Tomorrow the dentist.

1st speaker: Indeed, I am out of my element. When I lived in California, ah, all was palmy. I flourished in the sun, but here its heat is rude and pushy. These people all think just alike. They grow here rooted to the soil like barnacles to their rock. When will someone ask the question that will free my soul and let it rise and flourish and sing? I am the genie, locked still inside the lamp, pinched by unfair circumstance, awaiting the magic word. I hear the confident rumble of everyone else’s words knowing that my own alone would be garbled and meaningless as though run backwards. My silence is finally my preference.

2nd speaker: O might one feel secure in a grand and hilltop mansion? Or would I then attract lightning, jealousy, angry mobs perhaps? My position is a lofty one, but I gained it through deceit, I maintain it by impersonating a success. The strain is mounting. How can I continue the fraud another day? Another hour? Many eyes see through me, they slyly predict my downfall, indeed perhaps they can cause it. I’m propped up only by my reluctance to let the jackals lick my bones. Yet they advance steadily with sharp intentions in their eyes. I shall take refuge in the toilet. Perhaps it’s time to exit before my stride will be even less graceful than now.

3rd speaker: If only time could pause a moment I might regain my composure, but the ground slips from beneath my feet ever so slightly. I need only a chance to catch up, to rest a moment, to seize time and hold it by the throat and shake it until it gives me what I must have. I could then be master, I could flourish, yet here I am, condemned to run two seconds behind, always regarding my movie with a detached and critical eye and always writing later a most brilliant review which will never see the light of day.

4th speaker: Twinge of envy I am a barely balanced funambulist with no rest on the high tension line buzzing with power, the birds on either side skip and dance, the sun blazes with certainty and power, the other people are far away, all security systems on high alert these past few years, avoid feedback, prick of lust, flash of pale skin, twitter of neural dendrites leap every synapse whee whee mememememememe eeeee

Documents of the third Surreal Cabaret

The third Surreal Cabaret was presented at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, August 23 at the Seligmann Center for the Arts, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf.

The program

1. Steve Roe performed Museum Piece, a monologue describing a bizarre museum treating the relationship of art to commerce, science, and violence.
Roe is founder of COPE, the Council of (Poetic) Experimentation, a performance group dedicated to performing classic and original multimedia experimental works. Roe was Associate Producer and acted in the prize-winning film Under Jakob's Ladder.

2. Jennifer Kraus did Mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror which through video, movement and voice searches for redeeming vulnerability behind the current "selfie" culture.
Kraus, a Warwick native, is a dance teacher and choreographer. She most recently worked at HERE Arts Center in NYC as an Assistant Director. She has formed a theatrical production company, HUGE CUP Productions, through which she develops original dance theater work.

3. Michael Sean Collins delivered Igor’s Revenge, or The Black Dog Takes Another Bite, a macabre surreal existential monologue representing a conversation between a man and his unconscious.
Collins is an actor, poet, magician, photographer and former 22-year resident of New York City. He has performed in television, film, theater, cafes, night clubs circuses and alternative performance venues across the United States and Canada.

4. Chloe Roe sang Aria, John Cage’s composition which requires a single performer to vocalize in five languages using ten vocal styles.
Roe is a professional actress and singer. She appears as the lead in the feature film Feral Child and as Francis in The Library. She is also a member of The Manhattan Girls Chorus. But most of all she likes to rock out with her band.

5. William Seaton enacted The Debate of Thaumastes and Panurge, a disputation conducted entirely in gestures.
Seaton conceived the Surreal Cabaret. He also produces the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series and teaches workshops at the Northeast Poetry Center’s College of Poetry.

6. ArtCrime with John Korchok provided opening and incidental music and performed a unique version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.
ArtCrime is a cell of committed aesthetic hackers devoted to the overthrow of musical expectations. Using jazz, classical, and rock idioms, we make music that is reminiscent of the future. We sleep in the daytime, we work in the nighttime. We might not ever get home.


The poster by David Horton

[I haven't succeeded in reproducing the excellent poster by David Horton. Blogger doesn't seem to like the pdf format. Perhaps it will appear here soon.]


The benediction by the Lama Swine Toil

Good evening and welcome to the Surreal Cabaret at the Seligmann Studio, the staging area for advanced artistic research in Orange County. I am the Lama Swine Toil, Surrealist Chaplain, midwife to your imaginative endeavors for the next few hours. Allow me to bestow the special benediction of the unordained and to share a few words of scripture.
I am bedazzled to gaze upon you and to behold radiant perfect Buddhas enjoying the endless unemployment of Eternity. But in this quantum universe we find ourselves like Schrödinger’s cat in two states at once. I see as well as Buddhas small caged and pacing beasts like those in the Humane Society, motherless, anxious, and feeling alien indeed. Suspended between these realities, I invite you to make of yourself tonight a young child with no responsibilities beyond observing and playing.
And now a few words from our scriptures. Remember always the rule of the Abbey of Theleme which existed never and always: “Do as thou wouldst.” In different words the rural Midwestern prophet Ezekiel Cole expressed the same timeless thought “If thou hast eyes, go thy way.” Allow me to conclude with the glad exclamations of Lord Buckley’s Nazz, “Oh great swingin’ flowers of the fields! And the Nazz say “Dig Infinity!”

Documents of the first Surreal Cabaret

1. the announcement
A Surreal Cabaret will be presented at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, December 2 [2011] at the Orange County Citizens Foundation, 23 White Oak Drive in Sugar Loaf. Admission is free. The event will feature a series of short acts with local artists in performance.
In tribute to Surrealist émigré Kurt Seligmann (on whose estate the Foundation’s offices are located) each work will contain elements influenced by Surrealism. Breton’s “Manifesto of Surrealism” maintains, “in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest.”
Acts may cross genres from poetry and drama to dance and music. The audience can expect conceptual play, experimentation, improvisation, and audience involvement.
The performances will be presented by the Lama Swine Toil. Participating artists are David Horton, Jennifer Kraus, Daniel Mack, Oliver Olive-Eyes, Steve Roe, Patricia Seaton, and William Seaton.
Surrealism Festival events will continue indefinitely.

2. the artists and their works
David Horton is an award-winning artist whose work is included in major museums and collections. To him “making art is like making magic.” He teaches at William Paterson University. His work was titled Culture is not your Friend.
Director, choreographer, and dancer Jennifer Kraus currently dances with Movita Dance Theatre. She is the artistic director of newly founded HUGE CUP Productions, a live arts production company. She honed her directing skills under director Kristin Martin of HERE Arts Center learning the craft of directing. Her piece was Beautiful Evening to Enjoy the Charm of Being Alive
Daniel Mack is best known for his rustic furniture and for the books he’s written on rustic building. But lately, his own work has turned more to the eccentric. Using river bark he collects in Newburgh, he carves female-like figures, called "anima". He is also making small collages in the style of the Surrealists. He performed acts of Fumage.
Oliver Olive-Eyes Folk-punk-rock-funk singer-songwriter Oliver Olive-Eyes brings his creative blend of wit, irony, and hormones to the stage. Typical themes range from pasta to politics, compassion to compulsion. Finding insight in the unexpected, discovering solace through music, laughing, and crying, Oliver's songs are an enriching journey both wholesome and low in polyunsaturated fat. He sang a tune about love disrupted by an extraterrestrial.
Steve Roe is founder of COPE (Council Of Poetic Experimentation), a performance group dedicated to performing classic and original multimedia experimental works. Steve was Associate Producer for the feature film Under Jakob's Ladder, which won best period piece at the Manhattan Film Festival in 2011. Steve played the role of Hans in the film. He presented Bern Porter’s The Last Acts of Saint Fuck You.
Patricia Seaton was a member of The First Majority, a women’s art collective in Berkeley in the 1970s where she exhibited her drawings, paintings, ceramics, and sculptural works. She was an art teacher in San Francisco, Nigeria, the Midwest and NYC before her long career as an art therapist in psychiatric hospitals. She provided intermittent encouragement and direction of audience response.
Poet, critic, and translator William Seaton has been active in performance and spoken words activities since the Happenings of the sixties. A central figure of the Cloud House group in San Francisco in the seventies, he has presented the Poetry on the Loose Reading/Performance Series in the Hudson Valley since 1993. He performed The Soap Opera of the Pair Who Forgot Themselves, But Only Temporarily.

3. welcoming words of the Lama Swine Toil
Good evening and welcome to the Surreal Cabaret. I am the Lama Swine Toil . You may feel pleased, even blessed, that fate has compelled you to this event. As for those of us on this side of the footlights, we deem ourselves impregnable, since, if you don’t like what we do, we can be pleased to have outraged the Philistines, whereas, if you like it, we will be recognized for the geniuses we are.
As we welcome you to the Cabaret, we welcome Orange County to a blinking recognition of that art has evolved since the opening of the twentieth century. In support of this continuing process, here in the headquarters of the OCCF, I look forward to an ever-brighter future when the indoor areas of the government building in Goshen will be abandoned and the courtyards and roofs given to neo-pagan practices and penny socials; when Woodbury Common will have reopened as a theater of dreams with twenty-five stages enacting fantasies and nightmares and nothing costs a single cent, even the popcorn is free; when tourists at West Point will gaze at rubble and old foundations and marvel at the river and at the unapologetic fierceness of war.
Enough crystal-gazing! Look now before your eyes! Prepare to see visions flash by in succession. Should one not please, it is likely to be the one you need. In any event, wait a few minutes and the next will arrive. You may if you please imagine yourselves gods observing the eons pass: our first little act, perhaps, the Hadean, then the Isuan and Swazian to the present. Or it may be that, with enough imaginative participation, this entire presentation will displace itself in the dream-like abyss of the future. You will know.
And when you depart, you will find that you view the world outside with the same acceptance you give to your dreams and, this evening, to the stage.