LOOKING FOR TIGER LILY, starring Anthony Hudson – the human vessel for Portland’s premiere drag clown Carla Rossi – utilizes song, dance, drag, and video to put a queer spin on the ancestral tradition of storytelling. Asking what it means for a queer mixed Native person to experience their heritage through white normative culture as they recount growing up watching the 1960 production of Peter Pan featuring Sondra Lee’s blonde, blue-eyed “Indian Princess” Tiger Lily, Anthony (and Carla) draw from a songbook stretching across Disney’s Pocahontas to Cher’s “Half-Breed.” Not just autobiography, LOOKING FOR TIGER LILY is a coming-of-age story that’s more than cowboys versus Indians. Anthony will hold a post-show lecture immediately following the production.
LOOKING FOR TIGER LILY’s 2016 Portland premiere was featured on OPB and individually profiled by the Portland Mercury, Portland Monthly, Willamette Week, the Portland Tribune, and Oregon ArtsWatch. LOOKING FOR TIGER LILY has been featured at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, at the Talking Stick and Vancouver Queer Film Festivals in Vancouver, BC, at the Yirramboi Festival in Melbourne, at the Las Vegas Library District, and at PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival in Portland, OR.
Welcome to Clown Town: A Drag Workshop – Anthony Hudson will be hosting a hands-on drag workshop on Sunday, February 23 at 11:00 AM. This is a hands-on workshop! Anthony Hudson attempts to chart the vast abyss of drag and its potential, addressing how drag’s many varieties, flavors, and houses correspond to the unchartable spectrum of genders and sexuality – with supporting looks at its legendary elders, artists, and ancestors. $5.00 to cover workshop supplies | Target age 15+.
ANTHONY HUDSON (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, performer, and filmmaker perhaps best known as Portland, Oregon’s premier drag clown CARLA ROSSI, an immortal trickster whose attempts at realness almost always result in fantastic failure. Together they host and program Queer Horror – the only exclusively LGBTQ+ horror screening series in the country – bimonthly at the historic Hollywood Theatre, where Anthony also serves as its Community Programmer. In 2018, Anthony was named a National Artist Fellow by the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, a Native Launchpad artist by the Western Arts Alliance, and an Individual Artist Fellow by the Oregon Arts Commission in 2019. Anthony’s first professionally produced theatrical play – a multi-actor companion follow-up to Looking for Tiger Lily, commissioned by Artists Repertory Theatre – will make its world premiere in May 2020. Find out more at TheCarlaRossi.com.
DATE: Saturday, February 22
TIME: 7:30 pm
VENUE: Washington Center Main Stage
512 Washington St. SE
COST: Tickets: $15 $20 $25 $30