Baby Love
Christen Clifford is a true American avant-gardist,
a woman of candour and wit. Hailing from the grey
working-class city of Buffalo in upstate New York, she
arrived in New York City in the late 1980s in order to
study acting at NYU. She had both beauty and brains,
was fearless, and ready to think. As an actress she
ventured and broke boundaries, choosing work revolving
around feminism, politics and sexuality. The honesty
of Christen Clifford’s sharply honed prose has proven
amazing, and in Baby Love she writes with loving
boldness. With her intelligence welded to a rock-n-roll
attitude, she moves seamlessly between the realms of
theatre, literature and performance art.
Evolving from an essay published on Nerve.com, the
subject of this new performance piece is ‘maternal
sexuality’, as identified by Christen Clifford herself. In
this essay, her frank discussion of sensual/sexual love for
one’s infant - even while passion between adult partners
hovers on the brink of extinction - has aroused a heated
response. Some people, of course, trash the writer for
daring to speak of such a personal and universal truth;
others are naturally thrilled at finally reading their own
forbidden thoughts in print. So Christen Clifford
promises to take you on a journey through the as yet
unexplored psyche of sexual motherhood. She will
shock, and also - if you are honest enough - confirm
your own deeply held suspicions. We are all sexual
creatures, mothers and babies, as well as fathers too
of course. When forthright discourse about such feelings
of desire is suppressed - as often happens in ideological
communities - then actual, damaging, sexual abuse all
too often takes its place. In contrast, Clifford’s world of
maternal sexuality becomes life affirming and liberating,
as all avant-garde visions must ultimately be. She frees
us to experience the fullness of desire, both bodily and
emotional. Only in the realm of such fearless freedom
does true security reside.
Karen Malpede (Women in Theatre)
Baby Love performance was supported by New Georges and The
Hourglass Group.
Written and performed by: Christen Clifford; direction: Julie Kramer; choreography: Julie Atlas Muz
Organisation: City of Women
In collaboration with: Cankarjev dom
