Lisa and one of her many "acquired" awards. Photo by Bob Schaffer
Lisa in her study. Photo by Bob Schaffer
Lisa at home, amongst some of her early art. Photo by Schaffer
LISA LEVY, IDEA GIRL
It’s hard to put a name to what exactly Lisa Levy does (http://www.lisalevyindustries.com/). Conceptual artist, performance artist, filmmaker, comedian: none of these quite captures the spirit of her work. I became aware of Lisa through her “Psychotherapy Live” piece, where she pretended to be a therapist, and invited audience membersto come up onstage, lay on a couch, and talk, with Lisa analyzing the results. This has morphed into “Stand Up, Lie Down,” where comedians are put on the couch. I recently sat down with Lisa to try to analyze her.
“I guess you can call what I do ‘performance art,’” she tells me, “but I hate that term, it’s like ‘interpretive dance.’ I started out making visual art, I did a lot of installations. I did a piece where I was displaying things I had stolen, and I did a project interviewing art critics. I did a lot of different interactive things, and I thought it would be funny to do psychoanalysis onstage. I started at Surf Reality, I rented the theater and invited friends, then I got into a festival at HERE, and that’s how all this started. This was around 2001. My background is really visual art, I studied illustration in college, and I work as an Art Director for ad agencies. I made a lot of objects for installation, I never thought about performing.
“I was doing ‘Psychotherapy Live’ for this HERE festival, and got a good write up in Time Out and the Village Voice, and I was offered a monthly spot, then it got moved to Fez, and it did quite well. This show became ‘Stand Up, Lie Down.’ Originally, I used audience members, which I enjoyed, but it had problems. If I had a small audience, I could wind up with volunteers who were not that enthusiastic about being onstage. So I thought, comedians would be great, because they’re funny and interesting, and stereotypically, they have a lot of issues. Although I’m disappointed with how well adjusted a lot of them are. And I find that the more successful ones are often the more well adjusted ones.
“In this day and age, you have to have your act together if you want to be successful. I enjoy the variety of comedians I use, and many of them enjoy opening up to explore their issues.
"I’m also working with ‘Galley Beat,’ a video magazine by Paul H-O, which is a reincarnation of a ‘90’s public access show of the same name. There was also a documentary made with footage from it called ‘Guest of Cindy Sherman.’ I am the advice columnist for GalleryBeat and I do some correspondence. I have a home office for my therapy, and I video these sessions sometimes. I had a lot of comedians over last week, and one was crying over his problems, and another would make jokes, I like this variety. I think I like comedy because so much of it is conceptual, jokes are basically. I think comics go through a lot more stuff to do their material then a visual artist.”
I asked Lisa if she misses doing art.
“Because of my regular job, I could only commit to doing visual art or performance art, and I just wound up doing performance. Now that I have more free time, I’m going back to doing more visual art. It’s hard to categorize what I do, but it’s all very idea driven, so ‘conceptual art’ is the closest term. My art is very autobiographical, but the executions are all very different from one another. One new piece I’m working on is called ‘Women I’m afraid of Turning Into,’ which will be photographs of women I’m afraid of turning into, or other people are afraid of turning into.”
I asked Lisa if she was always an artist.
“Yes, the pieces you see on that wall are paintings I did at the Musem of Modern Art’s Children School, and I started going when I was 3 ½. I wasn’t a great student, but art was the thing I was always good at.”
Lisa’s father was an architect, and she was raised in Stuyvesant Town until she was 8, when her parents moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia, and she lived there until she went to the College of Syracuse.
“I studied illustration in college, which I liked because it’s very idea based. My problem was I used different styles to execute my drawings, and as an illustrator you’re supposed to have a recognizable style, so that’s why I became an Art Director, because you use different styles to express your ideas in that field. I love drawing and painting, but I always wanted to earn a living, so I was afraid of fine art, which might’ve appealed more to me if I wasn’t so afraid of not earning a living.”
Lisa also did a piece called "Red Carpet Live."
“That was a fun show. The idea behind this show was that. I wanted to explore my character, I didn’t just want to be a shrink. This had some of the same fun of audience participation, I was a red carpet hostess in a gown, and I’d interview people as if they were celebrities, but celebrities for who they were. I did that for a summer at the Brick Theater. I also did a red carpet for a Jagermeister event one Halloween. I also hosted the Oscars at Joe’s Pub. We showed videos before the show. I bought my gown at the Salvation Army, and I made a video of myself trying on gowns at the Salvation Army. We videoed the audience walking in, and showed clips of that during the show. The thing about this show is that it was an awful lot of work to do without a budget.”
Another show Lisa did was "You Bet Your Life Live," a revival, onstage, of the old Grouch Marx gameshow.
“That was a fun show. It was mostly my boyfriend’s idea, he thought the format allowed for a lot of ad libbing. But this too had the same problem of being a fairly large production, without a budget. But I did do a lot of research into the actual show, and Groucho’s ad libs were all scripted, and it took some pressure off me, that things could be structured, and not just have to be spontaneous. The major difference was that Groucho’s guests were all ringers, and I wanted ordinary people to be guests, people not involved with theater.
“I guess ‘Stand Up, Lie Down,’ is sort of a culmination of all my other shows, with hopefully a guaranteed entertainment factor, since I let the comics do their act before they take to the couch. When I started, I was a little intimidated, sharing the stage with comics who perform every night. I’d say it’s only been since September that I became a 100 % comfortable sharing the stage, so it’s been good for me.”
"Stand Up, Lie Down” can be viewed at Ochi’s Lounge, a downstairs space at Comix on W. 14th Street, the Third Thursday of every month. It’s a free show.
I asked Lisa if she misses doing art.
“Because of my regular job, I could only commit to doing visual art or performance art, and I just wound up doing performance. Now that I have more free time, I’m going back to doing more visual art. It’s hard to categorize what I do, but it’s all very idea driven, so ‘conceptual art’ is the closest term. My art is very autobiographical, but the executions are all very different from one another. One new piece I’m working on is called ‘Women I’m afraid of Turning Into,’ which will be photographs of women I’m afraid of turning into, or other people are afraid of turning into.”
I asked Lisa if she was always an artist.
“Yes, the pieces you see on that wall are paintings I did at the Musem of Modern Art’s Children School, and I started going when I was 3 ½. I wasn’t a great student, but art was the thing I was always good at.”
Lisa’s father was an architect, and she was raised in Stuyvesant Town until she was 8, when her parents moved to the suburbs of Philadelphia, and she lived there until she went to the College of Syracuse.
“I studied illustration in college, which I liked because it’s very idea based. My problem was I used different styles to execute my drawings, and as an illustrator you’re supposed to have a recognizable style, so that’s why I became an Art Director, because you use different styles to express your ideas in that field. I love drawing and painting, but I always wanted to earn a living, so I was afraid of fine art, which might’ve appealed more to me if I wasn’t so afraid of not earning a living.”
Lisa also did a piece called "Red Carpet Live."
“That was a fun show. The idea behind this show was that. I wanted to explore my character, I didn’t just want to be a shrink. This had some of the same fun of audience participation, I was a red carpet hostess in a gown, and I’d interview people as if they were celebrities, but celebrities for who they were. I did that for a summer at the Brick Theater. I also did a red carpet for a Jagermeister event one Halloween. I also hosted the Oscars at Joe’s Pub. We showed videos before the show. I bought my gown at the Salvation Army, and I made a video of myself trying on gowns at the Salvation Army. We videoed the audience walking in, and showed clips of that during the show. The thing about this show is that it was an awful lot of work to do without a budget.”
Another show Lisa did was "You Bet Your Life Live," a revival, onstage, of the old Grouch Marx gameshow.
“That was a fun show. It was mostly my boyfriend’s idea, he thought the format allowed for a lot of ad libbing. But this too had the same problem of being a fairly large production, without a budget. But I did do a lot of research into the actual show, and Groucho’s ad libs were all scripted, and it took some pressure off me, that things could be structured, and not just have to be spontaneous. The major difference was that Groucho’s guests were all ringers, and I wanted ordinary people to be guests, people not involved with theater.
“I guess ‘Stand Up, Lie Down,’ is sort of a culmination of all my other shows, with hopefully a guaranteed entertainment factor, since I let the comics do their act before they take to the couch. When I started, I was a little intimidated, sharing the stage with comics who perform every night. I’d say it’s only been since September that I became a 100 % comfortable sharing the stage, so it’s been good for me.”
"Stand Up, Lie Down” can be viewed at Ochi’s Lounge, a downstairs space at Comix on W. 14th Street, the Third Thursday of every month. It’s a free show.
Really good posting. Enjoyed it thoroughly. Lisa is killer funny and smart.
ReplyDeletePaul H-O
What an intriguing woman. Thanks for this.
ReplyDelete