Process

Among Iris Rose’s early performance works in New York, two of her most successful were
short pieces, both originally created for the Pyramid Club, that were based on true crime
stories of lethal family violence: House of Jahnke and Camden. They had been critically
well-received, popular with audiences, and, most important, artistically satisfying to work on.
Iris enjoyed the challenge of boiling a complicated, dramatic story down to a rapid-paced
condensation of the original that contained only its most salient details but all of its emotional
power.

Originally, Iris had meant House of Jahnke and Camden to be part of a trilogy. The first was
about a middle-class family in which the teenage son murdered his abusive father and the
second about a welfare mother who drowned her four small children. Iris envisioned them
sharing an evening-length piece with a third, upper class killer’s tale. However, before she
found a suitable subject among the wealthy, she became engaged by a different
classification of murderer – the serial killer. She was specifically intrigued by the fascinating
and horrific stories of the iconic serial killers of the late 1970’s – Ted Bundy, John Wayne
Gacy, and David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) – but didn’t seriously consider turning them into a
show until she came across the story of Velma Barfield in the Village Voice in 1984. At the
time, Velma was a 54-year-old grandmother on death row for poisoning at least five people
to support her drug habit. She was also a sympathetic figure with a tragic back story and a
plausible claim that she had repented and found spiritual redemption while in prison.

Two years later, Iris began to actively develop The Serial Killer Series, which included Velma
Barfield, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy – but instead of David Berkowitz, she chose to
focus on Henry Lee Lucas, whose bizarre story was still emerging at the time. She began her
research by rereading two books with which she was already familiar – Killer Clown: The
John Wayne Gacy Murders by Terry Sullivan Killer Clown cover and Ted Bundy: The Killer Next
Door by Steven Winn and David Merrill – looking for essential details and indelible images.
John Wayne Gacy image list Scanning bookstore shelves for more material, she found The
Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule, who had been Ted Bundy’s coworker at a suicide hotline in
Seattle, The Stranger Beside Me cover and a just-released, in-depth telling of Gacy’s story,
Buried Dreams by Tim Cahill, which she purchased in the brand-new, hardcover edition. Iris
found no books on Velma Barfield or Henry Lee Lucas in the bookstores or public libraries
and instead relied on newspaper and magazine accounts.

Velma Barfield

In developing physical action for The Serial Killer Series, Iris wanted each section to have its
own distinctive style. For the first and last of Velma Barfield’s five parts, Iris was mostly still,
since she wanted the audience to focus primarily on the writing. She had crafted it as a
novelistic narrative inspired by Southern writers like Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty.
“Home” script Her movements increased in the second part and peaked in the third, in which
Velma described her relationship to the drugs that were helping her cope with her
disintegrating life, while also turning her into a murderer. Iris’ psychiatrist friend, Dr. Gilbert
Alicea, had given her an old copy of the Physicians’ Desk Reference in which she was able
to look up the exact purposes and adverse reactions for all of the drugs of which Velma was
a known abuser. Other Watchface members, including ones not otherwise connected with
the production, helped her create Frankensteins for these drugs: Tranxene, Codeine, Elavil,
Dalmane, and Valium. drug Frankensteins

Composer and club performer Joshua Fried, who had previously collaborated with Iris on
Camden and the pre-Watchface show Mysteries, created the music for The Serial Killer
Series. As Iris had with the show’s movements, Joshua tried to create a distinctive style for
the soundtrack of each killer’s story. As a unifying element in all four stories, he used a
rhythmic track of breathing that he created in his signature style – by making a loop of reel-to-
reel tape and re-recording the result onto a single track of multi-track tape. He was then
able to layer other sounds, rhythms, and instruments onto the remaining tracks. Although
digital sampling existed at that time, Joshua preferred the sound he got from his hand-cut
and spliced tape loops. In three of the four sections, he also used a rhythm based on the
word “blood”; Velma Barfield was the exception – her weapon of choice was poison.

For Velma Barfield, Joshua created a complex soundtrack that was more melodic than
those for the other three sections, but still contained the layering, structuring, and
idiosyncratic sound choices that were typical of Joshua’s work. For the beginning, for
instance, in which Velma described her childhood with an abusive father, he created
electronically altered “angelic” voices that sounded as though they were playing
backwards, building up and abruptly cutting off. The backwards effect was an illusion,
however, that he created using a fader. At the end of her story, when Velma described her
religious redemption, the voices finally played without being stifled. They were
accompanied by harmonious chords played on an analog synthesizer that formed Velma’s
theme, heard only partially up to that point. Earlier, when Velma detailed the specific drugs
that led to her crime, Joshua made creative use of silence, the voices, the rhythmic
breathing, a loop of the word “drug”, and a persistent drone to reflect her altered states.

John Wayne Gacy

For John Wayne Gacy, Iris helped John Flansburgh create a vocabulary of simplified actions
– Walter Kendall Fives as they were known in Watchface – which were used as motifs that
repeated throughout the piece. These were clustered into sets of actions for each of Gacy’s
personas and used whenever he would employ a particular one. For example, Gacy was a
hypochondriac who used his “poor health” as a way of getting out of things he didn’t want to
do. Whenever the script made reference to this tactic, John would perform the actions Faint,
Feel Heart, and Take Pills. One of the most notorious aspects of Gacy’s complex persona
was his volunteer work as a clown called Pogo who performed at children’s hospitals. When
Gacy talked about being a good clown, John would Wave, Laugh, and Make Faces; when
Gacy revealed his bad clown side, John would Pinch and Goose. “Jack #6” script
Supplementary movements were gathered from a single Bodies in Space, but since John
had no prior experience with the improvisational Watchface method, Iris chose to confine
most of his actions to the style that Watchface members sometimes referred to as
“anti-mime” – gestures that suggested the essence of actions in the briefest, most succinct
way.

The most difficult portion of John Wayne Gacy – for the performer and the audience – was a
lengthy, mostly physical sequence in which John, with his back to the audience, enacted
Gacy’s signature crime of picking up a young man, taking him home, perpetrating the
“handcuff trick” (“The trick is you’ve got to have the key.”), raping him, and strangling him. In
performance, this was accompanied by a recording of downtown performance artist Tom
Murrin (The Alien Comic) reading a long piece based on the true story of the mother of one
of Gacy’s last victims (changed to a father for the show to take advantage of Tom’s warm,
fatherly voice). The mother had become convinced that her missing son had joined the
Moonies, and she described the lengths that his family went to trying to find him and bring
him home. “Jack #9” script

Joshua’s music for John Wayne Gacy used a bit of circus music as one of the elements, a
reference to Gacy’s clown persona, layered over or alternating with the breathing and the
“blood” loop.

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy capitalized on two of Kurt Fulton’s greatest strengths as a performer: his
considerable skill as a dancer (he had danced professionally for many years before his work
with Watchface) and his good looks (he had also briefly done some modeling) –
appropriate, since the real Bundy was often described in the press as handsome, an
advantage he used to manipulate women. Iris wanted as much of the information as
possible in this section to be conveyed through movement rather than words, most of it
generated in seven extended Bodies in Space sessions based on readings from The Stranger
Beside Me and The Killer Next Door. Actions from these improvisations were selected – by
Iris, but also with the assistance of Chazz, James Siena, and frequent Watchface collaborator
Richard Schachter – and organized into the choreography for most of the piece. Iris also
asked Kurt to create Emblems for specific states of mind, such as Cynical, Frustrated,
Grateful, and Wary, which were used as recurring motifs. In addition, they together created
Abstractions from Emblems for Childhood, The Law, First Victim, and other turning points in his
life story. The climax of Ted Bundy was an almost wordless section composed of Bodies in
Space movements inspired by accounts of one of Bundy’s final and most horrific crimes: a
vicious rampage through a sorority house in Florida. sorority house Bodies in Space notes

For one particularly affecting section near the end, the text was merely a list of the first
names of some of Bundy’s victims and a brief phrase identifying each one:

Georgann: Daffodil Princess.
Kathy: Majoring in religion.
Melissa: Perfect makeup and nails.
Donna: Into the occult.
Susan: Would never leave her dental floss.
Denise: Would never leave her makeup.
Jan: Psychic message to husband.
Laura: Screaming on Halloween.

Kurt stated each young woman’s name and description, then attempted to exactly
re-create her photograph using only his face, while framing it with his thumbs and
forefingers. He then slowly dropped his hands as the girl’s expression faded and he identified
the next girl, after which he transitioned to that girl’s face as he fluidly replaced the frame
around it.

Joshua provided Ted Bundy with what he called “an ugly sounding dance groove”,
containing both the ubiquitous breathing sound and the rhythmic repetition of the words
“blood” and “bloody”, along with synthesizer music unique to his section. It may have been
ugly, but it definitely had an infectious beat, since Joshua later used it in his live club shows.

Henry Lee Lucas

Henry Lee Lucas’ life as a drifter was a chaotic jumble of places and people, so Iris used “the
road” as a central concept and structuring device. The script for Henry Lee Lucas began
with “The Road #1” and ended with “The Road #5.” “The Road #2” script The most poetic portions
of the script were drawn from Jams by Chazz on specific topics, such as the City Mission,
State Hospital, Sexual Appetite, and of course, The Road. “Sexual Appetite” script Other parts of
the script were drawn directly from magazine and newspaper accounts of the facts of Lucas’
case as it was known at the time. “Dallas Times-Herald” script An abundance of movements
were created using a combination of Emblems, Abstractions, and Frankensteins and
assembled to resemble fast, cinematic editing, taking advantage of Chazz’s ability to
change rapidly between multiple characters and settings.
Henry Lee Lucas Abstraction and Frankenstein lists

With so much territory to cover, and a desire to keep the four killers’ sections approximately
the same length, Iris timed the individual Lucas sub-sections as they were written and
developed, and she budgeted her time carefully to determine how much could be
included. Henry Lee Lucas Emblems and time budget

For Henry Lee Lucas, Joshua collected samples from radio and mixed them with other
electronic elements including a synthesizer drone, the breathing, and the “blood” chant.
While looking for material on the radio, one of the first things that he found was a country
song by Kenny Rogers with lyrics that applied handily to the self-image of Lucas and his
traveling companion, Ottis Toole:

Like two heroes in a story
Let’s go out like we came in
In a blaze of glory

Three decades later, interestingly, Joshua would be known primarily as the artist behind
Radio Wonderland, in which he captured pieces of radio live on stage and then altered
them using various devices, including a sound mixer and a steering wheel rigged to alter
their pitch.

Immersing herself in such dark subject matter during the long research and rehearsal
process had an unexpected effect on Iris. “My shows were always based on things I was
obsessed with,” she recalls, “like Woolworth’s stores, and Little Women, and I still liked those
things after I finished writing about them. Before The Serial Killer Series, I read a lot of true
crime books, but afterwards I found I wasn’t as drawn to them anymore. There was one night
in particular, when I was reading one of the most horrific passages in Buried Dreams at about
3 AM, Buried Dreams cover and I thought, `Well, now I’ve looked into the face of evil, and I feel
like I know what it is, and I don’t really need to seek it out anymore.'” Later, when feature
films were made about Bundy and Lucas, she did not feel the need to see them, nor did she
read books about later serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer or the Green River Killer, though
she never entirely lost her fascination with criminal psychology and indiscriminate violence.