"If He Vomits Then I Will Too": an Interview with Mike Corrao

by Logan Berry

The title page of a brand new play called SMUT-MAKER.

SMUT-MAKER, an explosive 72-act play written by Mike Corrao & designed by John Trefry, is due from Inside the Castle any day now. Runaways’ Logan Berry interviewed Corrao via email about this strange new work, among other hot topics, including vomit and pandemic art.

A couple excerpts SMUT-MAKER and then the interview:

ACT 2 in full from SMUT-MAKER

& ACT 54 of SMUT-MAKER

LB: What's your relationship with theater? At what juncture in the writing process did you decide this would be a play? 

MC: It's a primarily text-based relationship, I think. I've participated in and collaborated on performance art with folks in the past--either writing the narration for a piece or in one I think I writhed on the ground violently to Sun Ra's Nuclear War haha. But SMUT-MAKER is the first full length performance-text that I've put together. The base formatting is inspired by Roberto Bolaño's Antwerp. It has these segments written like: "text" ... "text" ... "text" ... etc. Which I really liked. I've always had this fascination with disembodied voices. I think it kind of removes them from that immediate human source and converts them into this environmental component. It gives them this physical presence. And it felt really natural when taking that form to utilize it as this impossible performance. With one actor alone on stage, mouth ajar, summoning everything. 

LB: It's interesting you mention an actor alone. I was curious about what aspects of typical western dramatic texts you decided to include and exclude. SMUT-MAKER is organized into 72 numbered, labeled Acts, most of which feature speech-fragments (I'd be remiss to call them "lines" or "soliloquies", since they're not assigned to any particular character or origin) in amoebic masses. There's no dramatic personae listed in the text, tho it should be said that the very first fragment in Act 1, assuming the reader's eye starts at the top left of the page, is "Three boys." To what extend were you imagining concrete figures and situations for your disembodied reverberations? 

MC: I think of SMUT-MAKER as a text performing itself. In which each fragment is the actor performing their lines, and each shape on the page is part of the set-dressing / mise-en-scene. The book is set in 8.5" x 9" and each act is presented as a two-page spread--partially in an attempt to mimic the appearance of a stage. We (John from Inside the Castle and I) wanted to present each act all at once. As this chaotic cacophony of utterance. It's hard for me to imagine this play as something concrete / beyond the page. I approach every new project with the assumption that the book is an object and the page is a surface. From there, it's a matter of trying to figure out what interesting ways we can utilize that surface. In the case of SMUT-MAKER, it was turning it into this performance space. 

All of that being said, there is still a narrative thread obscured within the chaos. This series of sexually unfulfilling encounters with the 'Three boys.' And there are still performance instructions for those who want to attempt it--with the lone actor sitting mouth ajar as everything spews from them. Maybe thinking of them as this Greek Chorus, evoking the muses. Letting narrative and language flow through them.

LB: A cliché theater directors will sometimes tell actors to do is to, "raise the stakes," as in, "add some urgency" or "make a riskier emotional choice." I think the way narration, stage direction, and dialogue blend together and become characters/mise-en-scene/set-dressing, etc. in SMUT-MAKER is affective. Unlike most play-texts or screenplays which function as a blueprint for performance, this text is alive and occurring as you read it. The stakes are already there! Good luck, corny directors. 

You, "Mike Corrao," are also in the play, implicating yourself in the textual barrage. You're referred to as a "narrator-fool," someone who "can't write erotically," who coughs into garbage cans and rearranges their limbs into "new experimental orientations." Assuming these are sincere confessionals, I'm wondering how you see shame operating in SMUT-MAKER and in your life as a writer in general. 

MC: I am yea... The narrator-fool / smut-maker. I think in a lot of literature, the author is seen as this kind of divinated figure. The master who puppets the text and contorts it into whatever shape they please. But I don't feel like that's the relationship that I've had with my work. It often feels like something foreign being expelled from my body or some element of my unconscious taking shape on the page. I don't think that the author / playwright should be this venerated figure outside of the text. As I wrote it, SMUT-MAKER became this incredibly personal project, trying to work through my own interior dilemmas (sexuality, interpersonal relationships, making art, etc). Shame in this piece I think can be viewed two-fold. First, as the subversion of that holy authorial position, instead rendering the author just as grotesque as their surroundings / creations. And second, as me trying uncover these aspects of myself within the confines of the text-surface--with no pretense of having power or control over what I wrote.

LB: The number "three" appears fifteen times throughout the play. Exorcists perform archaic rituals. How do the occult and/or numerology factor into your writing process? 

MC: Truthfully I don't have an incredible familiarity with any prominent occult texts. I've read excerpts from the Desert Fathers, and books about Hekate, numerology, bibliomancy. I think popular depictions of magic and the occult have given people the impression that it is this kind of set arrangement of spells, books and practices. But I don't think that's the case. I'm drawn towards the unknowability of the occult. It's the refusal of the answer. It's not about understanding why mixing A and B together will cause them to do something, or knowing why each step in the ritual will summon X. It's this, I guess, technology of the self. A tool for gaining control over the operations of the mind and body. In SMUT-MAKER, and much of my other work, I try my best to utilize it as this text-source. Another means of utterance. A means for pulling new language from the unconscious / unknown. If that makes any sense.

LB: That makes complete sense. There's no cause & effect logic in SMUT-MAKER that one might find in a linear, American play or in a book of hexes.  The play itself is a kind of mesmerizing spell. It does not demand constant attention or solving. It's satisfying to look at, leave, and get lost in later. What's your composition process like? 

MC: Thank you. I'm glad that kind of textual-object quality is coming through. I like idea of a text where the reader is interacting rather than strictly reading--the book as something that you encounter / engage with. The composition process was largely done by John Trefry who is an incredible architect and designer. He did the layout for every act of the play. The only pages that I personally did were the instructions and the acknowledgement (which I wanted to take on this kind of curtain quality. Opening and closing the performance). Before he started we talked a lot about what we wanted the project to look like, and he did a few test layouts. A lot of the set-dressings are inspired by structures he found in these Greek archaeological folios. So for me, the composition process was a bit detached. I just watched as John made these beautiful tableaus, and gave feedback along the way on what I thought did and didn't work. 

LB: The balance between the conceptual/formal with the personal is remarkable; SMUT-MAKER blends them together such that the surface is—clearly, viscerally—the substance. How did you decide on the vibrant (violent) technicolor scheme? Was that something you knew you wanted to begin with or something that came later? 

MC: This piece began as a pretty straight forward looking book. Each act was presented as this linear progression of quotes (that "text" ... "text" ... "text" form). When Inside the Castle picked it up, we started talking about ways that we could really play with the form of the project. John Trefry, who runs the press, proposed that we do the book in color. Which I was completely on board for. He made a trailer that utilized this dull neon color palette that I was really drawn to. It has this vibrance that's both beautiful and  overwhelming. I felt that it really fit the chaotic qualities / potentialities of the language.

LB: "You are a witness to a vomiting." There is a lot of vomiting in the book. Literal vomiting—on the floor, on bedsheets, etc.—as well as vomiting as a description for the artistic process, drawing parallels between the two. Vomit "stained on pale surfaces" made me think of the page itself. It's an involuntary, bodily "byproduct of nerves and diet." What's your impetus for writing? Or, if that's too broad, what got you started with SMUT-MAKER? 

MC: It's a very vomit heavy book yea haha. It's funny because all of this just kind of spews forth from me. Thinking back to that idea of evoking the muses. I don't always feel like I have control over my work or process. It's this thing inside me that I need to expel or exorcise. I think the incipit of everything I've made has been this need to take these ideas out of myself and put them somewhere else. That act of removal. With SMUT-MAKER the process was very manic. I wrote it in about five days. I just sat at my desk at home and typed it out until I was done. I did that and I said that I wouldn't ever do it again. Then, when Inside the Castle accepted the book, I asked John if I could rewrite it. He said yes, and I rewrote the whole thing again in five days. A lot of the ideas embedded in this project are coming from my attempts to work through my own sexuality / desires / body dysmorphia, trying to make them concrete, or at least visible.

LB: If you could, would you rewrite it again? 

MC: No way! I don't think I could go through that gauntlet again haha. At least not for a third time with the same project. I'd be interested to remixes of the surfaces themselves tho. Thinking about how each act could mutate with time. How the actors / excerpts might change arrangements. I know there is that book Tristano where the passages are always shuffled every time a new copy is printed. I've been thinking of exploring that with a project in the future. Not with SMUT-MAKER tho. I don't think I could ever top what John did with it here.

LB: It feels full realized yet full of potential if theater-makers wanted to try and perform it. You have another book, Andromedusa, coming out this year from Plays Inverse Press. What's that about? Also, are you working on anything new? 

MC: I would love to see what kind of performances theater-makers create using SMUT-MAKER. 

Andromedusa looks a lot more like a play, although not without its challenges for potential performers. The play is about the resurrection of Andromeda and Medusa, the fusing of their bodies, and the changes that they go through as they expand into a giant amalgamation of flesh. The first act takes the form of a massive monologue performed by multiple mouths, while the latter two acts shift into increasingly abstract spaces. Being published by Plays Inverse, it fits under this moniker of the 'impossible to perform play.' It features fluctuating theater architecture, planetary destruction, and shapeshifting actors. It's been really exciting watching that one come together. I've wanted to work with P.I. for a while now. I think they do really incredible work.

Right now I'm finishing up a novel that explores the yet-to-be-created field of Ovidian Dynamics (a contested study of the metamorphic potentials of the body). It's told across these short almost aphoristic segments and includes enigmatic diagrams. 

LB: Those sound fascinating. Plays Inverse does great work, and more companies should try and stage their stuff! What's the Theater of Impotence?

MC: The term came up when John Trefry and I were trying to come up with taglines for [SMUT-MAKER]. I think of the Theater of Impotence as one that acts counter to the Theater of Cruelty, where instead of assaulting the sense of the audience--at least exclusively--the alienation reflects back onto the actor. With SMUT-MAKER, thinking of the author's destabilization. How 'Mike Corrao' is mocked and rearranged throughout the text. 

LB: What's a question you haven't been asked about SMUT-MAKER that you'd like to be asked? How would you respond? 

MC: I'm not sure... Maybe something about the concept of the schizopastoral. This landscape of mouths / utterance. It shows up I think about halfway through. Almost as this new appendage of the text trying to describe itself. I originally came up with it while doing the rewrites for SMUT-MAKER, but it's really stuck in my head since then. I've even written a few pieces specifically about it (here and here). I think it's a good encapsulation of a lot of my work. This exploration of the disembodied voice, and its position within the book-object. 

LB: We're writing to each other during a pandemic. Do you have any predictions or hopes for art during this plague-time? 

MC: It's hard to say, especially in these early stages when we don't really know yet what's to come. I think that we'll potentially see art exploring online / digital environments a lot more. Specifically dealing with our habitation of the internet and other virtual spaces (such as video games or various work programs). There's been a lot of work recently exploring these ideas, but I think now that more artists are confined to their homes and spending more time online, we'll see them taking up this mantle as well. I've already seen a lot of online readings starting up, which is great. I think now is a really important time to stay connected with people. To remember that this is a community and that we should be trying to support each other. 

Thanks for chatting with me, Mike! A final excerpt from SMUT-MAKER below:

ACT 66 of SMUT-MAKER

Mike Corrao is the author of three books, Man, Oh Man (Orson’s Publishing), Two Novels (Orson’s Publishing) and Gut Text (11:11 Press), one chapbook, Avian Funeral March (Self-Fuck), and many short films. Along with earning multiple Best of the Net nominations, Mike’s work has been featured in publications such as 3:AM, Collagist, Always Crashing, and The Portland Review. He lives in Minneapolis.

LETTER TO ARTAUD

by Logan Berry

Titian’s Venus of Urbino + cat

Dear Artaud,

I attended the cineplex! An opening night gala on Christmas Eve. I went to see the film that the critics are competing to deride: CATS. Its relentless aimlessness conjures a present-tense that expands in all directions, like a decaying atom or a toothache, crunching time-space together into distended meat-kissed-CG virtuality, a Purgatory that leads–if we admit one plot-ish aspect that permeates the proceedings like the aftermath of burnt garlic–to Death. Death, which stirs the skins of galaxies, the desires of possums and of proteins, the unmoved mover to which all things keel and simmer, that conjurer of mutagenic distributions, collagist of flesh mandalas and tectonic erasures. Indeed, we see the cats' death drives (what's the opposite of sublimated?) persist as intellectualized *and* instinctual, the Master of Ceremonies, a protean metronome that entwines itself with Eros. Eros and Death, slipping betwixt balletic lunges and frenetic pirouettes, superimposing themselves upon each other such that no primary form can emerge//be mapped or pinned within the ineluctable muck of the Jellicle Dance.

"Have you been an alumnus of Heaven and Hell?" - Tumblebrutus.

Jellicle = death-in-life//death-in-death. The twins Thanatos and Eros conjoined at the nape.

At the end (which is not an end) Grizabella, the strung-out starlet(-cat), sings a torch song and is therefore selected by Old Deuteronomy, (cat-)Bishop of Death, to be relieved of living and to be "reborn" in the Heaviside Layer, what critics have oft-read as an ascent into strip-mall Christianity's heaven where Grizabella will ostensibly be swaddled in the forgiving warmth of (cat-)God. Wikipedia informs us that the Kennelly-Heaviside Layer is actually a ring of ionized gas in the E-layer of the Earth's upper-atmosphere–the aeriform backboard against which frequencies emitted by ancient human radios bounce back and propagate across the Earth through stochastic ghostlike webs of information-varices called skywaves­–that simultaneously slurped up continuous wave tones from Enola Gay and spat the code A1269 ("Clear-cut, successful in all respects; visible effects greater than Trinity; Hiroshima primary target; conditions normal in airplane following delivery, proceeding to regular base" trans. Hiroki Kato) to the United States' Tinian base while transmitting a cry from Hell, an eyewitness account of the atomic bomb exploding, from Radio Tokyo to its channels in Germany that said, "The Americans . . . have torn off the mask of Humanity,” (trans. in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts) while perfuming living rooms across all three countries (and more) with transnational broadcasts of the croons-cum-dirges of NBC Radio's "National Barn Dance" station. That is, the Kennelly-Heaviside Layer became a medium manipulated by Power, for its fortification and attendant imperial culture.

What will happen when Grizabella beams up and breaches the ionosphere? Will she suffocate? Will she freeze? Will she combust and transubstantiate into communicatory matter, (mis- or dis-) information, condensate, ramify, and spew through speakers/cochlea across the globe? O Saint Immolation, Miss Euthanasia 1939/1980/2019–crowned with coronal loops for a feline economy of senselessness and revelry.

"There seem to be many more ways of going wrong than of going right," writes Eliot to a confidant vis-á-vis his anxieties about the quality of his poetry m.s., Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, the source text for CATS the musical. He explains that he does not want his poems to be arbitrarily strung together by narrativity (that dreaded human-centipede) but fears the poems, on their own, are "flat" (a pejorative, to be sure, in his usage, but I'd also read: amoebic, plotless, present-tense) and will jerry-rig some formal scaffolding via interludes that include chats between a himself and a Man in White Spats. He elaborates:

"At the end they all go up in a balloon, Self, Spats, and dogs and cats.

‘Up up up past the Russell Hotel,

Up up up to the Heaviside Layer.'"

Perhaps the reduction to religious allegory *is* appropriate, and Grizabella's (cat-)Christ ascent is stapled onto the play (it didn't ultimately make it into the poetry collection) in bad faith, like Saint Augustine's rendering of God as omnipotent & omniscient during the Middle Ages (he was really into Plato at the time!), or Bourgeois Xtianity's promise of life-after-life, reservations into Heaven taken via confession and church donations (credit cards accepted!)–slap-dash plot fabrications or thought-experiments that fuck up the whole system, altering it in all temporal directions (e.g. how it can be/is read today, tomorrow, and, crucially, how it *was* read, the past itself literally revised). "It's anywhere," write poets Olivia Cronk and Philip Sorenson in "Z-Axial Literature," "though especially on tombstones, that writing is visible: outwardly emanating forever."

"The mise-en-scène may not please," writes Eliot in that same letter to his confidant, concerned that his book might include portions, "that nobody would like." Intriguingly, critics seem to hate the movie/poem/musical because it's *too* pleasurable. "Worryingly erotic," writes one reviewer. "Two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster" writes another, alluding to the furry community, a subculture of humans who enjoy dressing up as other animals in full-body mascot costumes. "(A) semi-pornographic fur-fetishist's fever dream," "Seething, disquieting sexuality," "not not a sex thing," etc. The not-quite-human, not-quite-feline, elusive anatomical (read: genital) situation of these libidinal beings threatens hegemony's clean/demarcated/static conception of sexuality and taxonomy. These critics don't reveal flaws with the film; they reveal shame at their own arousal.

I’m reminded of multidisciplinary artist Juliana Huxtable's ZOOSEXUALITY installation, which features nude photographs of the artist with variations of hybridized anatomy–lacertilian, porcine, and canine respectively. The sundry udders, tails, snouts, etc. exhibit radiant, unnatural coloring–with hues of laser-tag fuchsia, lacquered purple, aluminum green etc.–and superimpositions of cartoon animal-faces achieved through a mix of practical (I'm tempted to say "organic"!) effects, like hair styling and makeup, with CG-augmentations. Even the human features look artificial, air-brushed, and made-over. Fantasy and (in)organics commix, and the human and non-human organs coextend and blend. In an interview about the installation, Huxtable says that she, "wanted a kind of psychedelic expansion of sexual desire." Such desiring rewires deeply entrenched anthropocentric cultural coding. This is not about becoming an animal, which implies inert definitions of what it means to be a human and what it means to be animal, partitioning each in opposition to one another ("humans against the world!"). Huxtable's futa furry hybrids and the CATS movie's animorphs dramatize identity-formulation in relationship *with* other animals. We *are* animals. Anthropomorphizing is inevitable, according to artist/ethicist H. Peter Steeves when we realize, "the bilateral nature of the projection, the fluidity with which judgements are made and change and are always up for grabs." He explains, "It's all right to see one's dog as feeling ashamed after he has messed the floor because, in part, we come to have the experience of performing shame ourselves by learning it from the performance of dogs."  We're co-constitutive of each other.

Huxtable raises the stakes with INFERTILITY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX: SNATCH THE CALF BACK in which she explores these themes within a "large-scale farming" setting. "YOU COULDN'T WALK A DAY IN MY SHOES ... / COMPREHEND THE VIOLENCE I'VE ENDURED..." she taunts in her in-character press release, challenging the viewer to try and comprehend it. Her main animal avatar in this exhibition is a cow-person pictured under duress. In one image she leans over a saw horse, her manacled hands behind her back as "pulsating milk tubes" pinned to her teats pump out her milk, as she tilts back her head in ambiguous pleasure/pain. Thinking about the diction a concerned outsider might deploy to describe her condition ("enslaved," "exploited," "demeaned," "violated," etc.) and thinking about the language her captors might use to describe her, congruencies emerge between the languages of animality and oppression (racism, sexism, classism, most the 'isms'!) (I'd recommend Aph Ko's eloquent RACISM AS ZOOLOGICAL WITCHCRAFT: A GUIDE TO GETTING OUT, which lays out this argument in greater detail.) Handwritten, diagrammatic notations dissect the situation into didactic, mechanizing term and reminders: "lower cow torso penetrated by farmer in act consecrating 'animal husbandry'" points toward her rear end, "convert saw horse into artificial insemination cage" points toward the saw horse, and "ears raised in surrender" point towards her cartoon bovine ears.

Vivisections occur throughout CATS, too, by way of director Tom Hooper's nearsighted camera work. With unusual fetishistic inclination for close-ups (musical-movie directors typically favor wide-shots to extract the spectacle's maximum sugar), Hooper's camera prods like a porn lens, cutting the cats into the parts of their sums. He seems especially fascinated by their tails–which function as stand-ins for their absent phalluses, externalizing carnal impulses through quivers and throbs, or else swooshing around flaccidly–and their genital regions, smooth and shapeless, as if touched up by the Amaro filter or by Ken Doll castration technology (which, it should be noted, inspires *more* not less intrigue, the same way the eye gravitates towards decrypting crossed-out text vs. the overt).

Confession: AA, years ago I was in a production of CATS. I played Old Deuteronomy, (cat-)Bishop of Death (portrayed by Dame Judi Dench in the movie-based-off-the-musical-based-off-the-poetry-collection). Throughout the rehearsal process and performances, I suffered constant flare-ups in my heart due to a congenital defect called Wolff-Parkinson-White-Syndrome. A rogue, superfluous pathway coursed between the upper and lower chambers and randomly fired off electricity, forcing the heart to thrash in double-time for unpredictable intervals that could last longer than an hour. WPW accelerations are typically not mortiferous, but they're disconcerting. I hate the feeling. I hate the feeling of the heart attempting to bust out of its cage. Attempting to burst through the layers of teen-gristle and faux fur, to choke its host with aortic twists. To drown it in red. This mutation/malfunction's roiling potential energy–it could trigger a system failure and kill me. It could remake me into an even more profitable prequel. Xenolithic death angel–rapacious bug­– It could do nothing.

Humanity foreclosed a future for itself and its organic co-habitants. But the end is not the end. It's also not-not the end. It's, "an end" (Anne Boyer). Shall we die-out as humans? "I n d i v i s i b l e ?" Shall we tear ourselves inside out? Gutlessness requires guts, as well as a cosmetic surgeon you'd trust with your unborn dozen. Shall we remake ourselves into the image of the book, the play, or the movie? Shall we circulate between the three? I'll accompany you for your renegade transformation, barely capable of faking one fucking song on the cello in Mrs. Rosas' fine earth class. I've given up on sleeping. I've given up on eating. Yes, A. Jellicle cats **are queens of the night. The audience is--decked out in X-mas crimsons, velvets, gummy green baubles, arrays of berets, and caps with veils-- frenzied by the film--crying and laughing and writhing at once in our seats! We can't get enough. We won't stop.

ttyl,

Lo

from Shintaro Kago’s Neko Funjatta.