Dear Karen Tenderness (and Dan),
My name comes with cultural baggage. A radio hit in my middle-school era spawned frequent valley girl inflected commands for me to “look at her butt.” Though I eventually came to welcome the reminder to check my privilege, my name’s association with oblivious whiteness made me aware that our names don’t really belong to us. They are signs within culture. A fact no name in recent memory embodies more than yours, Karen.
The promotional image for Queer Window depicted you in maximum Karenness: blond stacked bob, cougar print top, oversized glasses. But you, Karen Tenderness, overturned every assumption. Offered a glass of wine at the door of The Magic Garden Studio, I felt I was walking into a gathering at a neighbor’s house (if my neighbor was a wildly brilliant artist who’d been building a glowing, inhabitable pottery-glass-mosaic-sculpture collage for decades). A dancey pop playlist conjured divas of the past. Bits of mirror sparkled between trails of painted tile as the audience milled about in awe, occasionally meeting each other’s eyes, commenting, infatuated, amused.
And then, Karen, you appeared, like a Hollywood Regency starlet atop the stairs, and within a few bars I understood that I’d been sent here on a date, set up by some wise old matchmaker. As a middle-aged wife and mother who lived most of her life repressing her bisexuality, who finally found her kinky pink glasses last year and came out as queer, your show spoke profoundly, personally, to me.
It made me want to hop on a keyboard and erupt in a rendition of “I’m in Love With a Karen” (think T-Pain’s “I’m N Luv Wit a Stripper” but Vaudeville). The wry improvisation, the cheeky meta-commentary, the masterful crowdwork, the campiness of the props and theatrical tropes, the audience participants chosen for their reluctance, the filthy puns; all of it left a wide open queer window in my heart. I walked out into the darkness after the show, looking for those Karens who try so hard but who just don’t fit the mold prescribed by patriarchal culture. Who want to see and be seen. Who might also be looking for me.
Love and tenderness,
Becky Bondurant
Dan Kitrosser as Karen Tenderness in Queer Window runs Sept 5th-Sept 13th at the Magic Gardens Studio.
Becky Bondurant’s Penis Envy runs Sept 12-14th at The Louis Bluver Theater at the Drake.
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