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Show _The Salt Lake Tribune ARTS Sunday, May14, 1995 Gallagher’s Chilling Look E3 ‘Alice’ Sequel Carries Tiny Comedy Schtick At ‘Secret Nuclear War’ “They done to us what the Rus- sians couldn't do.” This is not a line out of a Tom Claney techno-thriller. Retired mortician Elmer Pickett of St. George said it. The ART ancyMelich ‘T LAKE TRIBUNE Alice has been the feminist of choice for TheatreWorks West for nearly a decade She, and assorted other Alices, met the acting company back in the '80s when it was known as The New Shakespeare Players. The relationship was an immediate success and group parties heading for the annual ‘Alice’ visit were scheduled months in ad- “they” he refersto is his own gov- ernment Telling the stories of Pickett and others, is the aim of ‘“American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War,” an exhibit at the Salt Lake Art Center by New York documentarian Carole Gallagher. a FRANK McENTIRE “has almost nothing to do with ourculture at this point.” Instead of continuingto participate in what shecalls the “grotesque” and “shallow and meaningless’’ aspects of the commercialization of art, she began documenting the “grotesque that has something to do with our moralcenterasa society, as a culture.” About this time in her career, she read some Atomic Energy Commission documents from the 1950s that were declassified in 1981. When she learned what government officials did to those whom they termed ‘a low-use segment of the population,” she set a new coursefor herself. Sherecognizeda “‘callousbigotty” in this phrase that was even more disturbing to her than the racial bigotry that sparked the civil-rights movement. “Thatilluminating moment brought me to the Westto investigate and document the effects of nucleartesting.” It was her springboardinto a purposefullife and a new form of art-making. The culmination of her work to this pointis the exhibit and a book by the sametitle. The 71 black-and-white photo- graphs and accompanying text panels also chronicle Gallagher's passion, if not her obsession, of the past decade, Gallagher’s work speaks volumes of an Americandesigned-and-executed holocaust — the moral, biological and envi- ronmental fallout of what she calls a “secret nuclear war.’ Her investigation, which she conducted with the tenacity of Nazi hunt- er Simon Wiesenthal, deals mostly with the victims of nuclear testing, not military strategy or national-security issues. Hers is a human approach, yet it is not fashionable or comfortable. The ‘‘downwinders’” and “atomic veterans” whoselives are vividly portrayed in “American Ground Zero” don’t haveidentification numberstattooed on their wrists, but they do carry scars on their bodies from multiple lifeprolonging operations and radiation-caused deformities and birth defects. They exhibit signs of exhaustion from caring for diseased and dying loved ones. Because of the dignified way Gallagher presents them, their sorrows, spawned by grief and betrayal, areless visible. The Art: Gallagher is no stranger to the big-league New York art scene. In fact, her life there is whatled her to redefine herself as a documentarian — whatshecalls oneofthe “working stiffs of the art world.” As a documentarian, she uses a complementof academicandartistic specialties anthropology, ethnography, photojournalism, biography, writing, politics, art — to carry her message to a complacent and dishelieving audience. Since receiving her MA in fine arts from New York’s HunterCollege in 1977, Gallagher has had one-artist exhibits at the renowned Leo Castelli Gallery and the International Center for Photography in New Yorkandatthe Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Her photographs have been published in The New York Times, Newsweek, The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle. Experiencing the contemporary art world’s capital city, New York, as an insider, Gallagher says she saw whatcheats the dealers and gallery owners were.‘“Absolutely unscrupulous. Even the best of them.” She says the art scene to which she was exposed = The Secret War: “My personal feeling,” Elmer Pickett told Gallagher, “is that those people whoare responsible for this are absolutely criminal. Responsible for heaven only knows how many thousands oflives, and they're getting off scot-free when they knowingly made us the human guinea pigs. They bombed Utah and we're paying the price.” “The really insidious part ofit, of course,” Gallagher says, “is thatit wasall invisible and thatit was all very well covered up almostto the present.”’ She says the Presidential Commission on Human Radiation Experimentsis releasing a report this month “ofail the various ways that human beings have beenusedin nuclear experiments. Andit wasall covered upvery skillfully for 50 years.” One hundred twenty-six nuclear bombswere explodedin theatmosphereat the Nevadatestsite from 1951 through 1962. Gallagherclaimsthat ‘many,if not most, of those bombs [and one hydrogen bomb] contained radiation in those fallout clouds comparable to Chernobyl.” Gallagher’s matter-of-fact black-and-white photographs are immediately accessible and convey information that’s just as im- MEMORIAL DAY SPECIALS "=e MAY 27 @ 28 @ 29 BABY BACK RIBS BARBEQUE READY SALMON A FULL RACK ~ LEAN, TENDER, JUICY AND HICKORY SMOKED WHOLE, FRESH $629 PER POUND ‘s s$q@99 6 PER POUND ~ ONE PINT OF COLESLAW FREE WITH EVERY PUICHASE OF THESE SPECIALS MARKET STREET BROILER FISH MARKET 260 SOUTH 1300 EAST # 583-8808 PLAGE ORDER AT FISH COUNTER @ At Jewett Center The TheatreWorks West production of “A ... My NameIs Stil/ Alice” continues tonight at 7 and Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m. through June 16, at the Jewett Center, Westmister College, 1250 E. 1700 South, Salt Lake City. Tickets are $10 and $12. vance. Whenthe Westminster College resident company moved to its new homein the Jewett Centerin Mayof '91, Alice wasthere to pop the cork on the champagne. &§ “A... Carole Gallagher's portrait of Ken Caseis part of her exhibit. BAtS.L. Art Center “American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War,” by Carole Gallagher, continues through July 2 at the Salt Lake Art Center, 20 South West Temple. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday, 1-5 p.m, portant and as complete as the text panels, which occupyat least as muchgallery-wall space as the photographs. This approach allows Ina Iverson, who grew up in Veyo, 25 miles from St. George, to tell her story: “Nobody had any problems [with pregnancy] until we went through the fallout. They'd talk about the Russians but I thought, heck, they experimenton our own people.” After the fallout started, Iverson said, “All of a sudden everybody we knew or somebody they knewor were related to was haying miscarriages at five or six monthsalong, or their babies dying on them,and I said something has gotto be going crazy here, it’s just not normal.” Theserecollections and photographic portraits are typical of the hundreds of people interviewed. Like the firsthand testimonies of Holocaust victims of Nazi Germany, Gallagher says her subjects “leave their memories to us as a warning.” Mormon Connection? ‘I have noill will toward Mormons or the [LDS] Church,” Gallagher says, “but I am one of those people who ask the questions.” From the answers she received, she formulated a profile of the ideal type of people who would tolerate the government's carrying outits “secret nuclear war.”’ There mustbe some reason, she thought, for the Atomic Energy Commission's and Department of Energy's “practice of waiting until the wind would blow toward Utah before testing bombs or venting radiation in order to avoid contaminating Las Vegas or Los Angeles.” In Gallagher's writings and lectures, she implies that LDS Church leaders are accountable for what happened to the Mormon people of the west desert’s most intense fallout zone. On whose ecclesiastical watch did sucha tragedy take place? Nocall was issued by LDSleaders, Gallagher says, “for a life-saving migration away from the open-air atomicblasts.” Thefact that then-apostle Ezra Taft Benson, eventually the church's president and prophet, was an Eisenhower Cabinet member “during the height of atomic testing” didn’t escape Gallagher's attention. And her concludingassessment? “My research offered reasons to contemplate the darker possibility of a quid pro quo between the government [Mormons] believed to be ‘divinely inspired’ and the Mormon Church.” Without elaboration about this accusation, she says, “An inquiry into that kind of Cold War churchstate alliance would require a book of its own, and another decade of research into a church whose secrets have always been shuttight as a tombandinto government agencies that had been shredding the evidence for decades.” And whethersheis willing to spend another decade on the “secret nuclear war’’ issue remainsto be seen. This exhibit is but one tangible markerofa national tragedy that has long-term consequences that extend far beyond Utah's borders. “Thereisn’t anybody in the United States who isn’t a downwinder,” said Air Force Col. Langford Harrison, also featured in the exhibit. Frank McEntire, a sculptor and writer, is The Salt Lake Tribune’sart critic. Amish Craft My Name Is Alice,” the musical revue by Joan Micklin Silver, Julianne Boyd and 26 contributing feminists has now given away to its successor, “A... My NameIs Still Alice.” Thesequel, also by Silver, Boyd and 28 contributing writers, premiered in May of "92 at San Diego's Old Globe Theatreand is cur- rently making its Utah premiere at Westminster. A boisterous audience, overwhelmingly female, voiced its pleasure at the Salt Lake venue Thursday, hooting and clapping as the six-member ensemble did their schtick for womanhood They identified with “Women Behind Desks’ a tribute to secretaries who are banished to the typing pool by a tyrannical male boss. They were delighted at the prospectof a “bridal” registry for the unmarried. ‘Why should all those gifts go to couples? I’m single. I need things.” They roaredwhile listening to a lecture by a female doctor from the Susan B. Anthony School of Medicine. Her topic: “Smallcox .. a disease that manifests itself in the political arena — found in pocketsall over the world.” They nodded in agreement over ‘Lifelines” andits stab at the advertising industry's obsession with poreless, line-free, 12-year old faces. And soit went. Sketch after mu sical sketch concerning the lives of anyone who walks throughlife taking “two steps forward and one step back.” Carolyn Wood, who gets the trophy for carrying the Alice banner the longest, returns with her appealing sardonic style. With frizzed red hair swept into a nest of sorts, and Betty Grable legs balancing onred stilettos, Wood raises the spirits of perpetual di- eters with her Juanita Craiga rou- tine. Tortillas and Mexican bottled water — brown of course — are the perfect combination for the bodysvelte Wood joins Bobbi Fouts and Teresa Sanderson in the evening's other “best Hard Hat Woman’ — a song and dance routine about whistlers on the job and what to do about them. Other routines are less successful and frequently tiresome. Contrary to what David Letterman may think, do we really need more Teddy Kennedy jokes? And if anyone can explain the Steve Tesich’s monologue “A Lovely Little Life,” raise your hand. Sequels frequently work better in theory than on paper and this “Alice” drops into that category. Theoriginal had a bounce and pithiness that is sorely missing in “Alice Still.” Thesatire frequently misses, the poignancy is out ofleft field. A song about an abandoned baby. thoughtful and troubling, is at odds with the tone of the evening The production, under the diréction and choreographyof Barb Gandy, features savvy actors. some of whom can sing. A few solos were downright embarrassing. Musical accompaniment doesn't disappoint. The reason the consummate‘Alice’ musical direct Jeffrey Price back again at the piano with Scott Hacker on percussion and Christopher Smith, guitar and bass. The acting ensemble also features the pleasurable stylings of Tracy Chase, Trudy Jorgensen and Faith Partee. Scenicdesign is by B.K. Henrie with Kiyono Oshiro casting the shadows and the sunshine on the playground with notable lighting designs. Hit and miss black and white street clothes by Steve Rasmussen seldom flatter. The exception: Juani- ta Craiga’s ruffled blouse with its made-to-sambasleeves. Authors Sought for Council’s Writing Competition Utah authorsare invited to enter the 37th annual Utah Original Writing Competition, sponsored by the Literary Arts Program of the Utah Arts Council The competition, the country’s oldest such event for writers, seeks original, unpublished manuscripts of poetry, short fiction, novels, juvenile books, non- fiction and personal essays. Entries will be judged bya panelof accomplished writers. First-place cash awards will range from $5,000 for the Publication Prize awarded the best book-length work from the 1994 competition to $200 forthe shortstory and personal-essay prizes. Deadlineis 4 p.m. on June 30 uilt & ale Direct From Lancaster County, PA Friday, June 16 - Noon to 8:00 PM Sat., June 17 - 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Utah State Fairpark - Grand Building TEE * $10 155 N. 1000 West, Salt Lake City, UT Amish Country Quilts & Crafts brings their third annual sale to Salt Lake Cily featuring over 300 Quilts plus Wall Hangings, Pillows, Dolls. Toys, Books, Furniture, Rugs, Artwork and much more from the Amish & other Crafispeople of Lane: Stay at the StateLine or Silver Smith in Wendover in a beautiful room mid-week andplay the challenging Toana Vista golf course with a cart - for only $10. While you are here, enjoy the best buffets in Wendover. The Northern Utah Choral Society Presents Haydn “ CREATION penta FRAMPTON PETERPra PyNA atae AGS NPSL with the Will Kesling Chorale and Orchestra and Special guest soloists Susan Deauvono, Mark Calkins, Clayne Robison Will Kesling, Conductor Ellen Eccles Theater June 3, 1995 7:30 PM Ticket Prices: MORRIS AVAILABLE ATALLOumTtrS Tix OUTLETS $12, $10, $8%° $2” Student Discount 801-752-0026 TOLL FREE TICKET HOTUNE 1-800-889-TIKX AL THK ARE SUBJEC' TO A SERVICE CHARGE FORRESERVATIONSCALL 1.800.848.7300 |
