Process

Kim X Knowlton and Iris Rose began work on What’s Your Problem? by discussing their own
complaints and those they often heard from others. They grouped these into five categories
– money, health, sex, family, and sanity – which provided the sections for the show.

Together they created an outline and assigned each section a tone, a rhythm, a strategy for
generating the script, and one or more techniques for working out the choreography.
Money, the first section covered the challenges of getting and keeping a job – interviews,
caffeine abuse, dressing for the office, and ambitious bosses:

Both:
The boss does coke, the boss does coke
He’s so busy, he’s so busy, he’s so busy, he’s so busy
He’s gotta go here, he’s gotta go there
He’s gotta go here, he’s gotta go there, here, there, here, there

Kim:
He’s got a power breakfast

Iris:
He’s got a power lunch

Kim:
He’s got power fitness

Iris:
He’s got a power workout

Kim:
He’s got power steering

Iris:
He’s got power brakes

Kim:
He’s got a power bathroom

Iris:
He’s got power dressing

Kim:
He’s got power shoes

Iris:
He’s got a power tie – it takes those little cassettes for dictation

Both:
Power lunch, eat this!

After payday, the focus changed to spending and managing money with lines like, “The
taxman and the Grim Reaper: the two men you can count on” and “There’s a dam in my
cash flow.”

Kim and Iris improvised the script by Jamming, a technique that Watchface often used to
turn ordinary language into something more playful, distorted, or profound by tapping into
the performers’ subconscious minds. The movement for Money came from Walter Kendall
Fives for actions related to working – Sorting, Phoning, Guiding, Carrying, and Remembering
– and spending – Putting on Pants, Looking in the Mirror, Paying, and Looking through Rack –
plus Emblems that were sometimes performed in unison and at other times were created
specifically to be interactive, a rarity in Watchface. Emblems for working included Coffee,
Job Interview, and Friday.

Health was constructed on the foundation of a smooth and controlled aerobic exercise
routine that degenerated into bursts of specific Emblems for things like Jowls, Handicap Seat,
and CAT Scan. Health Emblems Jamming was again the source of the script, and the tone was
“anxious.” The subject matter ranged from aging and mortality to issues of body image and
weight:

Iris:
Fat kinda lubricates
Inside your skin
So it all slides down
Toward the center of the earth

Kim and Iris wrote the lines for Sex together, throwing out ideas and writing down their
favorites. The next step was to create a rhythmic Emblem, known as a Remblem, for each
phrase selected. This was often the way Remblems were made, but for Sex the Remblem
actions were then turned into Abstractions. Sex Abstractions This created a step of removal
from the overtly sexual subject matter. The rhythm alternated between the syncopated
pulse of a heartbeat and a straightforward, unaccented beat. They helped keep the rhythm
going throughout by writing a series of two-word phrases that they chanted in unison
between the longer Remblem phrases. In the outline, the tone for Sex is described as
“duality,” and they accentuated this by compiling a list of contrasting dualities related to sex,
such as aggressive/passive, lead/follow, donor/recipient, and external/internal. These
alternated with the two-word phrases as they approached the climax of the section.
Sex script

The collaborators began work on the next section, Family, by discussing problems relating to
families, which they expanded to include both romantic relationships and friendships
besides the expected nuclear and extended family members. Family discussion notes Again,
they Jammed to generate the spoken material, then shaped the results into a rhythmic
script.

Both:
And by the way, ex-best friend
It’s time to return my stuff
My scarf and all my albums
My boyfriend you can keep
And did you ever notice
How you look just like me?
Oh, please don’t bother lying
I can read you like a phone bill

The choreography began with a dance they worked out together: fists on hips; hop and lean;
foot to foot; two hops, then switch. This odd folk dance was referred to as the “neutral
dance”; it repeated throughout Family as punctuation amidst the many Emblems illustrating
the majority of the lines or was combined with an Emblem that involved only the hands and
arms. The rhythm was meant to suggest a ballad or traditional long-form poem and the tone
was “sad.”

The final section, Sanity, was written to resemble a therapy session, with Kim and Iris
alternating as the therapist.

Iris:
Whenever you’re ready…

Kim:
Why do I think I’m better/worse than everyone else?
Why am I so cynical when I see happy families on TV?
Why do I want to kill them in awful ways?
Why are my perceptions so different from other people’s sometimes?
How can I be as happy straight as I am when I’m stoned?
Why do I feel sexy just riding on the subway but not once I get home?
Why do I start crying over nothing?

They each wrote their portions separately to a regular 4/4 beat and created Remblems to
represent them. The subject matter for Sanity was wide open, based on their desire to, as
Kim later described it, “dramatize all that is hidden.” They touched on everything from their
own specific insecurities to the biggest questions and concerns of modern life. This was
reflected in an unused tagline they considered including in their publicity materials: “Did
they find answers for the big, big problems of life? Come and find out!!” Although the
answer was no, it wasn’t for lack of trying.