‘Singlet’: Erin Markey’s Newest Un-Creation

When I asked Erin Markey if I could review their newest piece, Singlet, I promised to do better than Ben Brantley by using “they/them/their” pronouns. I had no idea what I was in for — who knew that a performance artist, whose literal project is to problematize language, would be hard to write about?
 
Here’s one opening line I’ve tried: “Erin Markey doesn’t make theater — they unmake it.”

Here’s another: “In Singlet, Erin Markey problematizes language and roles by leaning into the tenuous but inescapable power words have over bodies and relationships.”

Markey’s work warrants a treatment that does justice to both its silly virtuosity and academic rigor, so I’d like to take a more conversational approach, because, truly, as a critic, I’m out of my depth. I certainly wouldn't be the first.

A Ride on the Irish Cream, Markey’s 2016 offering at Abrons Arts Center, explores a romance between a young girl and her family’s pontoon-boat-slash-horse (played by performance artist Becca Blackwell). But, whereas that relationship is more or less “stable,” Singlet pushes the investigation further by shifting contexts and roles between Markey and collaborator Emily Davis throughout the evening, sometimes within paragraphs. It could feel psychotic, but it doesn’t in the hands of director Jordan Fein and company.

At one point, Coach Christie Brinkley (Davis) challenges Coach Pooh Bear (Markey) to use the vocab term, “windswept plateau,” in a sentence. We expect Coach Pooh Bear to shoehorn it, but Pooh Bear’s ensuing monologue is fun, poetic, and seductive. Markey seems to suggest that we can treat ourselves in a similar way. Those of us with unfamiliar bodies, new “vocab terms,” as it were, can give ourselves new contexts to be understood. We’re not limited to the shoehorned performances of selfhood presented to us in the social studies classrooms of life.

In another scene, Markey and Davis trade off playing a mother, a daughter, and a grandmother in a hospital room, but we never know exactly who is playing whom! The grandmother calls the daughter “Mom” in one sentence, the mother refers to the grandmother as her daughter in another, etc. Does the grandmother suffer from Alzheimer’s? Is her illness the source of the ambiguities in the scene? Aren’t all three of these women caught up with “mothering” one another, regardless of their “actual” relationships to one another? Why do we need to know who is whom, anyway? By confusing the speakers and questions to the point of absurdity, Markey and Davis center the underlying emotional gestures of the scene as they defy the laws of physics. Maybe the differences we’d like to invest in these three characters aren’t that important after all.

Markey and Davis both wear wrestling singlets, from whence the show gets its name, and they both wear their hair in long braids. They’re costumed similarly by Enver Chakartash and Carter Kidd, but in that sameness, we see their differences in relief. They could be two facets of one person, or they could be all of humanity. They wrestle at times, but they could also be dancing or having sex, thanks to the nuances of Chloe Kernaghan’s choreography. The maneuvers of their identities and relationships turn on a dime, aided brilliantly by the agile tone-shifting in Jeff Aaron Bryant’s music, Keenan Hurley’s sound design, and Barbara Samuels’ lighting. Carolyn Mraz’s stage is a white photo studio cyclorama, a blank surface onto which the audience can project its own interpretations.

Ultimately, Singlet is a virtuosic thesis on the imprecision of words relative to bodies. For Markey, the space opened up by that imprecision feels at once like a funeral home and a Chuck E. Cheese’s. You’re not sure whether to laugh or cry, so you kinda do both. I want to compare the feeling to a quantum superposition of (emotional) states, but I also want to compare it to an emotional shart. Decide for yourself.

Singlet runs at the Bushwick Starr through June 12, following an extension by its producer, un sphinx incompris. See www.thebushwickstarr.org for more information and to buy tickets.