John Fleck, of the NEA Four, Returns to La MaMa Oct. 2-19
By Robert Simonson
08 Sep 2003
Keeping track of the career of controversial performance artist Karen Finley since she was notoriously defunded by the National Endowment for the Arts for obscenity in 1990 has been relatively easy. (Her latest show, Make Love is currently playing New York City's Fez.) But whatever happened to John Fleck, arguably the most obscure and forgotten and infamous "NEA Four"?
Well, Fleck is back after a long hiatus. His new show is called Nothin' Beats Pussy (a fair reminder of what caught the NEA's attention in the first place). It will play La MaMa Oct. 2-19. The piece, described as a "one man freak show complete with cocktails and puppetry," promises to satirize homophobia and suburbia.
Fleck plays several characters, including "his butch ex-army father, his glamour-hungry mother and a talking fist named Pussy."
The work was developed and workshopped at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Evidence Room in Los Angeles. The titled is derived from a succinct bit of advice Fleck's father gave him when the artist told him he was gay.
Since his run-in with the NEA, Fleck has spent a lot of time in Hollywood, doing television and film. He has appeared in all four incarnations of the modern-day "Star Trek" series ("Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager" and "Enterprise").
The other two members of the "NEA Four" were Holly Hughes and Tim Miller.
For more information, call (212) 475-7710.
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