Process

Iris Rose usually created performances as part of a group; even when she was the writer and
director, the material was developed collectively. Her only previous solo works had been
Camden, on which she had collaborated closely with composer Joshua Fried, and
National Enquirer, for which her then-fiancée James Siena had supplied live musical
accompaniment onstage. In March 1987, Iris Rose toured California alone, presenting a
double bill of Camden and Velma Barfield, which originated as one-quarter of The Serial
Killer Series. Compared to earlier trips with other members of Watchface, getting around by
herself was simpler – and more lucrative – so Iris started thinking about creating a full-length,
highly portable solo show that she could easily take on the road. Extreme Women, the
performance that resulted, was truly a one-person show. No other performers were involved;
no composer wrote original music. Iris wrote it, directed it, made the costumes, designed
the promotional materials, created most of the movements, and rehearsed the finished
product alone. The exceptions were rehearsals in which she asked some of her Watchface
colleagues to help her generate movements using their usual collective techniques or, later,
to watch the final rehearsals and offer their feedback.

The earliest inspiration for Extreme Women was a photograph that Iris saw in 1982 just as she
was preparing to move to New York City. She asked a friend, Roger Mexico, to tell her about
the book he was reading – Hitler’s Children by Jillian Becker. It was an early account of the
exploits of the Baader-Meinhof gang, or Red Army Faction (RAF). This was the first that Iris
had heard of the terrorist band for whom the German government built a special,
escape-proof prison. She was definitely intrigued, but she was particularly fascinated by a
photo near the back of the book of Ulrike Meinhof standing in the prison yard with her arms
above her head and her hair roughly cropped. Iris had spent the years 1978 to 1981 in a
punk rock band, and the woman in this photograph seemed to her so fierce and beyond the
concerns of conventional society that Iris felt some sort of kinship with her. Iris held onto that
visual image of Ulrike, without learning anything else about her, until 1987, when she
decided it was time to find out more and put the result on stage – and also to find some other
larger-than-life women to profile along with her.

While working on Of Little Women, Iris had done research into the work of François Delsarte,
the French acting teacher who attempted to categorize all human emotions into a complex
organizational system of gestures. This was intended to allow an actor to give a more natural
performance, though the result was usually the opposite. Delsarte triangulated many things
into sets of three, but the primary trinity that served as the foundation for all of the others was
the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. Iris decided to use that set of categories to find
the other women to complete the triangle. She felt that Ulrike Meinhof represented the
embodiment of the mental extreme, a woman whose intellect took her to a place far from
what was ordinary or conventionally acceptable. Iris chose Mother Teresa, who saw Jesus in
all who were destitute or dying, to represent the spiritual extreme. Jayne Mansfield, whose
voluptuous body – 40″ bust, 21″ waist – was the primary source of her celebrity, represented
the physical extreme. The three women also embodied extreme versions of common roles
for women: Jayne, the sexual object; Ulrike, the bookish smart girl; and Teresa, the
self-sacrificing mother.

Iris embarked on the research that was needed to tell these three women’s life stories, from
childhood to, in two cases, death, and in the other, old age. She found Hitler’s Children, the
book to which Roger Mexico had introduced her, at the New York Public Library’s main
circulating branch, along with plenty of helpful magazine articles on the Baader-Meinhof
gang in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Esquire, among others. She also noticed
in the card catalog that the reference library across the street – the one with the big stone
lions facing Fifth Avenue – owned volumes of the German magazine Konkret, for which Ulrike
Meinhof had been a regular contributor.

As Iris made her way through the books and articles, she came to know the titles of some of
Meinhof’s most essential writings. Though she was unable to read German, she flipped
through the research library’s bound volumes, looking for familiar words and concepts. The
periodicals were not allowed to leave the building, but she wrote out a list of the German
titles of Ulrike’s articles Konkret titles in German and enlisted her neighbor, artist Marlene
McCarty, to translate them. Marlene had grown up in Kentucky but was fluent in German
after attending design school in Basel, Switzerland. This was not Marlene’s first contribution to
a Watchface production – she had provided the narration for Iris and James’ warped
storybook show, Talespin. Iris chose articles to Xerox based on Marlene’s translations of the
titles, her own knowledge of Ulrike’s writings, and pure intuition. When Iris returned with the
Konkret articles, Marlene translated them too. As Marlene completed her translations, Iris
found that she had managed to collect plenty of great material with her instinctual
selections. Whether there were even better articles still sitting in the research library, she
never knew. An example of Ulrike’s writing for Konkret, in Marlene’s translation:

Windows were broken, autos were burned, tires were slashed. The windows will be paid
for by the insurance, and the trucks will be replaced by brand-new ones. The life of a
human is a different thing from a window. Those who condemn the stone-throwing and
arson but don’t condemn the bombing in Vietnam, the terror in Iran, the torture in South
Africa, are measuring with a double standard. You want a non-disturbing opposition,
democratic sandcastle games. Protest is when I say: I don’t agree with this and that.
Resistance is when I take care that this and that don’t happen anymore. Protest is when
I say: I’m not going to participate. Resistance is when I see to it that everyone else stops
participating. Ulrike Meinhof supports the action.

The identification Iris had felt with Ulrike Meinhof upon first encountering her picture
evaporated when she learned how Ulrike had treated her children. After Ulrike engineered
Andreas Baader’s escape from prison, she arranged to have her eight-year-old twin girls
kidnapped from their father’s custody and sent to an orphanage for Palestinian children in
Jordan. Luckily, her plan was thwarted. “Ulrike Meinhof #5” script

The circulating library also contained a substantial biography of Mother Teresa, Such a Vision
of the Street by Eileen Egan, but was short on biographical information concerning Jayne
Mansfield. Producer-director Kevin Malony of TWEED Ensemble suggested that Iris speak to
John Epperson and gave her John’s phone number. John, who at that time was just
beginning his legendary career as Lypsinka, was also known as an avid collector of showbiz
memorabilia. John told Iris he would be happy to help and generously invited her over to
look through his voluminous collection. He happened to have an extra copy of Jayne
Mansfield and the American Fifties by Martha Saxton, which he gave her to keep, and he
loaned her a copy of the trashier Jayne Mansfield: A Biography by May Mann. He also
directed her to the West Village video store that owned some of Jayne’s more obscure films,
like Single Room Furnished and The Wild, Wild World of Jayne Mansfield.

As the script was coming together, Iris was also beginning the long process of accumulating
the necessary movements to fill a 90-minute solo show. In February, earlier in 1987, Iris had
presented The Serial Killer Series at PS 122. The show consisted of four solos, by Iris, Chazz
Dean, Kurt Fulton, and John Flansburgh from the band They Might Be Giants, that told the
stories of four serial murderers. Iris liked boiling down a true story to its essential structure and
then re-building on that structure a compact representation that contained the original’s
emotional truth. She had been developing this style since some of her earliest work in New
York, including House of Jahnke and Camden, and she returned to it now. From the press
release for Extreme Women:

Rose presents their stories in a style that will be familiar to those who saw her The Serial
Killer Series – movement ranging from abstract to concisely descriptive and a
pared-down, yet emotionally rich, narrative told in both first- and third-person.

Once the script was complete, Iris marked it line by line with a letter indicating the category
of movement to be performed in conjunction with that line: E for Emblem, F for Frankenstein,
B for Bodies in Space, and W for Walter Kendall Fives. For each of the women, as a starting
point, Iris invited her usual collaborators to view one or more Bodies in Space sessions
covering the woman’s entire life story, though wildly condensed.

For Jayne, the movements resulting from these sessions were supplemented by numerous
Frankensteins for important themes in her life, Jayne Mansfield Frankensteins such as Teen in
Love, Wedding, Perfect Mother, Sex Goddess, Fading Beauty, Serious Actress, Exhibitionist,
and Battered. Iris collected lines and specific actions from Jayne’s films, meticulously noted
and imitated. She also physically re-created more than 30 still photographs harvested from
her various research materials. Jayne Mansfield stills Nearly half of these were used in one
rapidly executed routine as she listed Jayne’s many beauty titles:

Miss Orchid, Miss Nylon, Miss 100% Pure.
Miss Freeway, Miss Four Alarm, Miss Queen of the Chihuahua Show.
Miss Négligée, Miss Texas Tomato, Miss One for the Road.
Miss Standard Foods, Miss Electric Switch, Gas Station Queen.

Sprinkled throughout were recurring Emblems, including Outfit, Picture in the Papers,
Packing, Back to Work, Las Vegas, Nightclubbing, and Lipstick. For the latter, Iris executed
the action of applying lipstick while saying the name of an actual shade, like Cherries in the
Snow, Baby Bare, or Wine with Everything. The Emblem for Outfit was used when the script
described one of Jayne’s actual ensembles. These included: “Strapless red dress with a
circle skirt,” in her first screen test; “Red toreador pants and a low-cut leopard skin blouse,”
for a public appearance; “Gold lamé pants and a white sweater cut to here,” when reporters
“unexpectedly” appeared at her house; and “Ponytail, miniskirt, powder blue boots,” at a
custody hearing.

Ulrike also had recurring Emblems in addition to her Bodies in Space movements, including
Art History, Christian Pacifist, Writing, Wanted, and Caught. Ulrike Meinhof Emblems Befitting
Ulrike’s status as an intellectual, many of her actions were Abstractions. Those included
Mother’s Death, Demonstration, Safe House, and Lawyers.

Ulrike Meinhof ended with a gesture indicating that Ulrike had hung herself in her cell. It was
only after the show was in performance that Iris learned about the controversy concerning
Ulrike’s death. Many people believe that she was murdered by the prisons guards, who later
apparently murdered the rest of the Baader-Meinhof gang. None of Iris’ sources, most of
which were written soon after the events described, had mentioned the legal challenges to
the coroner’s report.

To portray the down-to-earth Mother Teresa, all of Iris’ movements, other than those from the
initial Bodies in Space session, were simple Walter Kendall Fives for the most common
activities in her daily life. The complete list of these recurring actions:

Listen
Give
Feed
Support
Smile
Teach
Nurse
Cook
Deliver baby
Hold baby
Hold child’s hand
Hold child
Take communion
Pray with rosary
Wash clothes
Scrub
Sew
Eat
Receive money
Thank
Distribute

Each of the characters required specific music to establish her time and place. For Jayne,
Iris wanted some upbeat “jazzy” music like one might hear on The Tonight Show or in a Jerry
Lewis movie. She went to the jazz section of the sizable Tower Records store at 4th Street and
Broadway and asked the manager if he could recommend “the whitest, lamest jazz” in his
department. He seemed to relish the task – a chance at last to critique the popularity of
certain icons not to his taste – and after roaming about the department looking for inspiration,
he returned with Dave Brubeck’s album Time Out and a Gerry Mulligan LP. Iris bought
the albums, but when she got them home, they turned out to contain much more
sophisticated music than the showbiz schlock she had in mind. Luckily, she managed to find
one clip from each that was useful for Jayne’s story.

Iris chose visionary German composer Stockhausen’s music to represent Ulrike’s life as an
intellectual, and switched to rock as the 60’s, and Ulrike’s chaotic criminal activities,
escalated. A Jimi Hendrix guitar solo accompanied her description of a demonstration that
devolved into violence and the keyboard intro to Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale”
evoked the car radio as Ulrike drove from safe house to safe house. After she had already
made these choices, Iris found a justifying quote in one of her research materials, “Ulrike
liked American music.” “Ulrike Meinhof #4” partial script

Mother Teresa’s section was mostly music-free. Church bells tolled while she espoused her
personal philosophy in an inspirational speech constructed from direct quotes by Mother
Teresa:

Be as clear as glass.
Be empty, that God may fill you.
Speak as little as possible of oneself.
Do not seek to be specially loved and admired.
Choose always the hardest.

A loud, jazzy horn fanfare from a song by Oakland R&B group Tower of Power greeted
Mother Teresa’s arrival in Las Vegas. “Mother Teresa #3” partial script

The only other music in the section accompanied Mother Teresa’s globetrotting travels as her
Missionaries of Charity spread around the world. Iris created an aural montage of music
representing as many as possible of the exotic places she visited in her travels, including
India, Venezuela, Italy, Tanzania, the South Bronx, Guatemala, Kentucky, Mexico, and what
was then Yugoslavia.

The bells tolled again at the end of the show, as Mother Teresa explained what Jesus meant
to her. The speech, again constructed of actual quotes:

Who is Jesus to me?
The word made flesh.
The bread of life.
Jesus is my spouse.
Jesus is my only love.
Jesus is my all in all.
Jesus is my everything.