The Buddy Performance by William Pope L.
November 17, 1994
20-minute excerpt
THE BUDDY PERFORMANCE, a work in progress tells the tale of two cowboy gynecologists in search of the male grail; the cup of male purity which eases difference and confirms the love of football. The performance piece explores the conventions of contemporary "Buddy" movies, the myth of Percival and male dominated professional milieu of gynecology to create a comic-tragic fantasy journey to the center of the American male psyche. The Buds are William Pope L., African American performer/writer/director and Jim Calder, Caucasian, performer/director. In the Buddy Performance, they conduct their experiments in nothing but lab coats and duct tape. To the Buds, a woman's body is the dark continent. In the beginning, they worked to live, now they work to forget. They have systematically alienated everyone around them; family, friends, clients, even their pets, and set out on a fantasy journey, which takes place entirely in their office, in search of the elusive male "minstrel" cycle.