About

What’s Your Problem?
Money
Health
Sex
Family
Sanity

Inspired by the popularity of Chazz Dean and James Siena’s Stereotype, Iris Rose
approached Kim X Knowlton about creating their own female version of a two-person club
show. Kim enthusiastically agreed. Looking for a universal subject, they decided the show
should be about all the things that people habitually complain about. Everyone’s unique
and specific problems, they decided, could generally be divided into five categories:
money, health, sex, family, and sanity. For Kim, this project was in some ways an extension
of Ralph and Louie’s Bad Habits, an exploration of compulsive behavior she had written and
performed with Maggie Siena in 1986. In both, the creators used human behavior as a
source of humor, but the process was motivated by a sincere desire to better understand
how to deal with the challenges of everyday life. Kim and Iris held discussions, and later
rehearsals, alternating between each other’s living rooms. Iris took notes in a spiral-bound
lab book. Iris’ notebook cover

The crazy, chaotic opening section of the resulting show, What’s Your Problem? was called
Money. It was about earning and spending and included this ode to coffee in the
workplace:

Both:
Take five
Take a breather
Take a break
Take a coffee break
A nice, relaxing cup of coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee
Black coffee
Hot coffee
Iced coffee
Strong coffee
Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee
Makes me a little more on the ball
Aaaaaaah

The actions in the second section, Health, were based on an actual routine from Kim’s
aerobics class. The later lines touched on illness and aging but the section began with the
gym and the pressure to watch one’s weight:

Both:
Cut the Weight Watchers chocolate thing in half
Want half?

Kim:
Just less than half
Just a sliver

Iris:
Just a slice
Just a quarter

Kim:
Just an eighth of a sixteenth
Just a smell
Can I just smell it?

Iris:
Oh, just the smell of food makes me sick, sick, sick!

Kim:
I’m just anorexic
You’re so lucky you’re bulimic

Sex was another particularly energetic section, though the movements were more abstract
and less athletic. Kim and Iris kept the rhythm going by using a series of two-word phrases
that they performed to the pulse of a heartbeat:

Both:
So soft
So hard
So wet
So what

These were interrupted by longer rhythmic phrases like, “I’ve heard there’s one hundred
positions, so how come I only know three?” and “It’s stressful being the egg-bearer.”

The section about family was based on discussions of everything from the Oedipus complex
to boyfriend-stealing best friends. The first topic in their original discussions, though it
appeared a bit later in the resulting script, was about mothers and the fear of turning into
them.

Both:
My mom, she was a saint
St. Mom of the Apple Pie
They gave me money, love, and time
Now I’m as guilty as hell
Well, hey, you should feel guilty
You are the apple of their eye
Now they’re rotting in some home somewhere
Why, you’re rotten to the core

I’m turning into my mother
I got the same mustache
Same bad feet and rheumatism
Same short attention span
Things got mixed up somehow
Now I’m you and you’re me
Now you’ve become a baby
And I’ve become an old fart

In the final section, Sanity, Kim and Iris alternated playing therapist while the other revealed
her greatest concerns and deepest fears. The show ended with this gloomy meditation on
the most unanswerable questions:

Iris:
Is mankind doomed to kill itself?
What will I do about it?
What is going to kill me?
Do forces of evil exist?
Is God just a human invention to make us feel safe?
How come I find it so hard to believe in God when so many millions of people have no
problem with it?

Is there life after death?
Do you maintain contact with your friends?
What about the people you like but who didn’t like you so much or vice versa?
Or just people who like each other equally?
So are lonely people still lonely?
Do you come back?
As what?
Who decides?
On what system?
Why don’t they tell you the rules so you know you’re not breaking them?

Kim:
Well, what do YOU think?

Both:
I’m sorry, your time is up

The costume worn in all of their performances reflected Kim and Iris’ self-identification as
nerds combined with their need for comfortable clothing for their highly active
choreography. They wore black-rimmed glasses without lenses, held on with black elastic
straps around the backs of their heads, colorful bowling shirts and contrasting crossover snap
ties like uniformed employees sometimes wear, stretchy black cotton miniskirts, and hightop
sneakers. They called it their “rocket scientist sex goddess look.”

What’s Your Problem? never came close to achieving the popularity of Stereotype and was only performed on four occasions. It’s in-depth exploration of the most anxiety-producing
aspects of daily life was an odd fit for a raucous club audience. What’s Your Problem? was
much better received by the audiences at the performance space Dixon Place and the Los
Angeles gallery Oranges/Sardines, Oranges/Sardines flyer who were expecting something
challenging, than those at the West Village club Siberia, Siberia calendar and Limbo, a
nightclub in Hollywood, where Kim and Iris bravely talked about their deepest problems and
executed their sexual aerobics for an audience of complete strangers.