Yes, you read that right: HOLE PICS are not just for private and indoors. This summer, they’re public and al fresco.
Sugar Sugar, the free outdoor performance series, returns this June for its second season, bringing with it a slew of experimental artists, including the collective HOLE PICS (more on the name, and their work, below). Free summer performances can lean mainstream, but Sugar Sugar uniquely gives experimental artists working across (but more often between) dance, theatre, and music a chance to have their work be accessible in a large venue.
At Williamsburg’s waterfront Domino Park, performances will run at 8 pm every Wednesday and Thursday this June — last year, a quasi-cowgirl-realtor danced atop a car in the middle of the amphitheater, which is to say, predicting what you’ll see is hard to say, but what can be said is you should go check it out.
Below, HOLE PICS — founded by MTHR TRSA and produced with Buffy Sierra — discusses their show, running June 17 and 18.
Greenpointers: Okay, HOLE PICS! Let’s start there and baptize the unfamiliar: what’s in the name?
HOLE PICS: HOLE PICS (yes, those kind) pulls its name from the intimacy and exposition of sharing the most private parts of ourselves with others. The name began as a gag in The Vault (a now defunct venue in the basement of McKibben Lofts), but as the show grew the name took on a life of its own, grew wider in meaning, deeper, gaping. HOLE PICS is a cunty mess and a sticky situation, gaggy, full of drama and spectacle as much as it is intention and talent. Always was, always will be. It represents what we are as a community: everything.
Talk to us about the work you are conceiving for Sugar Sugar — or whatever of it you are able to discuss or are finding at this stage?
Transsexuals crawling. (Collaborative experimentation with a clear prompt and an unclear finish; poetry, lip synch, dance, nonstop shows, an insane megamix, role play, and hot girls smoking by the water.)
Sugar Sugar uniquely offers a large, outdoor stage. How do you prep or rehearse for that?
Last spring, TRSA was smoking in Domino Park at night with a friend. She FaceTimed Buffy, turned the camera around, and said “Shows.” We’ve seen HOLE PICS in Domino Park in our heads for over a year, and we’ve had some time to imagine, now we put it in motion. The universe seems to have had this in motion for a while, so we’re just taking cues.
It is rare that outdoor programming highlights more experimental-leaning works. What are you feeling as you bring a work to perhaps a broader audience?
Fierce is fierce.
To best experience Sugar Sugar, what is it best for audiences to bring — mentally, emotionally, spiritually — to your performance?
Audiences should expect exactly what you always find at a HOLE PICS production: something you’ve never seen before.
Thank you! Anything else you want to add?
Thank you to the team at Sugar, Sugar. We’re grateful for this opportunity and we’re excited to bring a fresh hole into a new space.