The Hummer Sisters
The Art of Satire
By Donna Lypchuk

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts that The Hummer Sisters ever gave audiences was the assumption that they were intelligent. Satire is probably the most misunderstood of all art forms, as in order for it to be appreciated, the audience must have some kind of prerequisite knowledge of common archetypes, history, and most importantly, current events. This is highly unusual in a national theatrical and performance arena that usually relies on predictable myths, approbation from other works, and maudlin appeals to emotion. If there is one thing that I am personally grateful for, it is that the Hummers never asked us to take that tragic tumble down Aristotle’s steps to soap-operatic parody without substance. This group actively demonstrated the non-partisan aspects of practicing true satire, by holding no sacred cows and practicing a unique blend of cabaret and documentary formats. This highly diversified and talented group of performers, writers and artists were making fun of the politically correct dinosaurs long before it was “hip” to do so.

To understand the evolution of the Hummers, it is important to understand the cultural milieu that served as the manger of their birth in 1976. It was a time when even Norman Lear’s “Archie Bunker” was maligned for perpetuating a negative stereotype of a racist. Canada was busy building its vertical mosaic and feminists were rooting through the garbage cans looking for remnants of their burnt bras. Marshall McLuhan was the Obi-Wan-Kenobi of media and Joyce Weiland was courting the Prime Minister in The National Art Gallery with female handiworks. Locally, punk and performance art were starting to catch fire, as was the notion of the artist as “personal terrorist”. As eye-rolling as some of these concepts seem today, they enraptured the imaginations of audiences who, in a kind of pre-Yuppie trance, were looking forward to the prosperity of the 80s. Only rich societies can afford such scandalous conceits as “personal terrorism”.

Whereas theatre in the 60s was identified with American draft dodgers, who received funding to conduct a long portage by covered wagon to perform in Canadian villages, theatre in the 70s was finding a refuge in alternative galleries such as A Space in Toronto and the Western Front in Vancouver. These performance, which were often gestural and de-constructivist in nature, seemed to be a part of a massive allergic reaction to the defining Canadian plays of the era such as George Ryga’s saccharine The Ecstacy of Rita Joe, and the endless remounts of Sam Shepard plays about Southern White Trash. In the alternative spaces, Dadaism and other forms of retro-futurism were hot as was any interaction with technology. You have to remember in the days before Karaoke, anything that remotely resembled a live video camera was the immediate object of excitement and fetishization. It was also a time when the Toronto Morality Squad was out in full force, shutting down productions and art exhibitions as well as creating an Orwellian fear of the “thought police”. At the time, the coolest thing that you could be was an artistic “subversive” who could undermine the authority of these enemies of free speech.

In February 1976, The Hummer Sisters, which at the time consisted of artist performer Bobbe Besold, actor and video artist Janet Burke, video-performance artist Marien Lewis, and playwright-performer Deanne Taylor, joined forces with playwright Michael Hollingsworth, video-artist and designer Chris Clifford and composer-performer-writer Andrew J. Paterson to form VideoCabaret at A Space on St. Nicholas Street, Toronto.

At that time, VideoCabaret’s main interest was combining elements of video, rock ‘n’ roll, and the visionary theories of Marshall McLuhan and Aldous Huxley in theatrical format. The Hummers loved the cabaret format, which is much friendlier to the evasive ways of true satire. This allowed them to use multiple aspects of performance including art, graphics, video, voice-over, photography, text, narrative, and interaction with technology, to create a platform for some of the most truly daring remarks ever made on stage in Canada.

The Hummer’s first production was a scandalous concoction called The Patty Rehearst Story, which featured music by Andrew Patterson and Michael Brooks. A takeoff on the kidnapping of “poor little rich girl” Patty Hearst, the performance was ultimately a satire of the modern woman’s journey of individualism: from kidnapping, through rebellion, to eventual submission. This sentiment is very much summed up by lyrics from a song featured in the performance called the Brides of Jesus:

We’ve all been brides of Jesus
Hollywood and holy war
We’ve all been brides of Satan
And now we’re getting more
We’ve traded in our habits
Hairshirts and thorny crowns
On the lam with Tania
Underground…

In Patty Rehearst, audiences first got a glimpse of a few of the Hummers’ favourite themes that would also predominate in future shows: the media as a weapon (video camera units called “lubicons” were pointed at individuals like guns) and class struggle. It was also a parody of the media machine, Hollywood, and in true Hummer fashion, ululated generously to the tune of current events. Originally performed between segments of Hollingsworth’s Strawberry Fields, Patty Rehearst was written by Deanne Taylor based on a collective performance art concept by the Hummers. It evolved into a full-scale production that juxtaposed questions about free will with the extravagances of the rich and powerful. This unusual theatrical event also boasted an element of the “snake eating its tail” where the characters constantly broke “the fourth wall” rule of theatre by complaining they were held hostage by the structure of the drama. The stage was split between high-tech video equipment (screens, colour cameras) and guerrilla video equipment (hand-held cameras and monitors painted with camouflage), to dramatize the power of the low-tech media-terrorist against the media empire of the Hearsts. Image-wise, the Hummers also made references to McLuhan’s ideas about “hot and cold” media by using video effects to highlight strong words and dramatic events.

In a way, the Hummers were the Oliver Stones of their time. Twenty years before the release of Natural Born Killers and ten years before the rise of local media mogul Moses Znaimer, they were using graphics and video technology to illustrate how media manipulates human behaviour.

From 1977 to 1979, the Hummers performed their second production, The Bible As Told To Karen Ann Quinlan, in Toronto, New York, Calgary, Vancouver, and London, England. This was not a call to arms for feminists but more of a “wake up” call from a long dormant phase. Once again, this production was way ahead of its time, demonstrating that ideas about female myths and notions about women are manipulated by the media. Its content preceded Susan Faludi’s landmark mid-90s examination of the subject called Backlash. The star of the show was The Private dyke, played by John Bentley Mays (and later by Robert Nasmith); a Phillip Marlowe-tyoe character who goes in search of the perfect woman. To do this, he goes “undercover” in a girl’s world to learn the gospel according to the media’s favourite coma baby at the time – Karen Ann Quinlan. Video monitors displaying female bodies in all manner of compliance and narcolepsy complimented the script, which savagely skewered “the deep sleep of the body politic” and both the failure of feminism and the failure of men to recognize that yang without yin is about as creative as Eve without the apple.

The Bible As Told To Karen Ann Quinlan is a stark and scathing look at the loss of female power (referred to as “booga booga power” in the script). The opening monologue, sung by the chorines (played by the Hummers), takes the form of a manifesto that accuses:

Sisters you have been purged of your booga booga power!
You don’t cry, you don’t bleed, you don’t sweat, you don’t dribble,
You don’t pee, you don’t cream, you don’t come
And now you purge your brothers.
Faceless sexless soldiers, drying up the ocean,
Cleaning up the mess…
Sisters.
Your bodies are occupied territory,
Bristling with IUD installations
Humming with chemical sterility,
Invaded by vacuums and knives.

True to VideoCabaret’s mandate, this show also featured live performers interacting with pre-recorded tape – a big first in Canadian theatre. The concept was taken to its apex by Hollingsworth’s brilliant production of Electric Eye, with Andrew Paterson as a guitar-wielding serial killer visiting a pre-recorded world of lost and depraved souls, and Alan Bridle’s The Last Man on Earth with Bridle playing one live and seven pre-recorded characters.
The Hummers’ next show featured the troupe searching for something called the “male vagina”. Nympho Warrior, which turned the concept of “penis envy” into “venus envy”, was one of the most interactive shows produced by VideoCabaret and featured live drawing on stage by artist Bobbe Besold as well as live and pre-recorded interaction between the characters. The show begged the question “is biology destiny?” while at the same time kicking at the pedestal of the patriarchy, Nympho Warrior was performed in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and New York in 1978.

In the 80s, the Hummers regrouped and reinvented themselves as a group of three core performers: Deanne Taylor, Janet Burke, and actor musician Jenny Dean. The dawn of the new decade seemed to have a sobering effect on the troupe, and they became involved with local political issues. Their creativity was also provoked by developments in technology that allowed them to refine their “mirrors within mirrors” style of interactive video performance.

Where’s Fluffy (The Decline and Fall of Babyland) was further indictment of Hollywood’s fascination with the monsters that are created by the media. For two hours, the audience was assaulted with altered television images and original media footage featuring such personalities as Reagan, Trudeau, and Khomeini. This elaborate pre-recorded environment created “an incubation area” for three budding psychopaths.

Aside form the foreshadowing of the Natural Born Killers theme, Where’s Fluffy was also one of the first productions in the entire world to alter video images by putting unexpected words into the mouths of political leaders and celebrities. This form of video satire (which can be compared to puppetry) has since been adopted by every major talk show in the United States and the UK, as well as Canada’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes. .Where’s Fluffy was produced by VideoCabaret at Theatre Passe Muraille in February, 1981 as well as the Toronto Theatre Festival in May, 1981.

The Tom Tube Show was the first of the Hummers’ faux “talk shows” and featured Alan Bridle playing a slick, dapper, smooth-talking character called Tom Tube. Tom Tube sat a central kiosk and was switched “live” inside 149 Yonge Street to celebrate journalists and commentators played by Burke, Dean and Taylor. An alternative to the news, it was the Toronto equivalent of New York’s Saturday Night Live. The Tom Tube Show initiated a long-term trend which found VideoCabaret and the Hummers at the centre of their community as well as local politics.

Perhaps one of the most spectacular interactive, multimedia events ever pulled off by a performance group in history was The Hummer Sisters’ ART Versus Art campaign. In 1982, after VideoCabaret and the Hummers took up their residency at the Cameron House hotel, they decided to run for Mayor of Toronto under the collective ballot name of A. Hummer. The entrepreneurial spirit of this campaign is summed up by the Leni Reifenstahl-type photograph taken by renowned photographer David Hlynsky, which shows the three Hummer Sisters: Dean, Burke, and Taylor, “reporting to the carpet” in their Bay Street suits beneath the space-age curves of New Toronto City Hall. Their main opponent was Art Eggleton, thus the title ART Versus Art.

Over a hundred local Toronto artists contributed to the campaign by creating performances, posters and window installations. This event also marked the ultimate centralization of the Queen Street Arts Community which at the time believed that a vote for art could transform their neighbourhood. Issues on the platform were live-work zoning for artists, political responsibility for all citizens, and “developer-free” campaign funding as demonstrated by the Hummers’ “Penny a Plate” luncheon that contrasted greatly with Art Eggleton’s elaborate fundraising affairs.

Terry McGlade, Bongo Kolycious, and Alan Bridle helped produce a campaign video, featuring the three Hummers interacting with local citizens and a series of video press releases scripted by Taylor. Andrew Paterson, Brent Snyder, Bruce McCulloch, and Nigel Dean composed music for the nightly series of performances that were held at the Cameron. Scores of local luminaries showed their support for A. Hummer including singers Lorraine Segato and Molly Johnson, sound=poets The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and comedian Sheila Gostick.

Tom Tube hosted these live events from the second floor of the Cameron House and broadcast live to the first floor tavern. This broadcast was peppered with satirical sketches, interviews with voters and the genuine mainstream media as well as the Hummers’ signature “talking heads” animated video parodies. Each night, segments from live television reporting on the Hummers prodigious popularity as candidates for mayor were incorporated on the spot, into what was broadcast on the monitors.

Incredibly, A. Hummer almost became mayor of Toronto, in 1982, garnering an unheard of 12,000 votes. Their “runner up” status was an embarrassment to local politicians as well as to voters who came to question the validity of the voting process as a result. This antic enacted on a grand scale represented performance art at its best. The nightly performances and the trajectory of the campaign were recorded and edited into a 57-minute videotape called ART Versus Art that was screened at the Toronto Festival of Festivals. The surreality of the situation is still not lost on those of us who were there to witness the Hummers’ incredible transformation from parodies of media pundits to parodies of politicians to a parody that was good enough to actually make them real players in the surreal world of politics.

In June 1983, the Hummers resurrected the buttery Tom Tube to host a simulation of the 1983 Conservative Leadership Convention. Tory Tory Tory featured the Hummers performing their crowd pleasing parodies of media pundits: Darlene Daily, Wanda whiplash, and Barbara A. Honey (a parody of right-wing journalist Barbara Amiel). These interviews were conducted simultaneously as the results of the convention unfolded live-on-air on conventional TV. This show also had altered videos of political speeches, written by Taylor and edited by Janet Burke and filmmaker Ed Mowbray. Robert Nasmith and R.H. Thomson supplied the voices for candidates such as Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark. The show also included an examination of the political issues of the time, such as mass terror about the effects of free trade on the economy.

When Brian Mulroney won the leadership that evening, the impending sense of doom with regard to the future of Canadian culture was palpable. These images were caught on a 35-minute video and debuted at the Toronto Festival of Festivals in the fall of 1983.

That same year, Taylor wrote and the Hummers produced a savage work about the history of birth control that was enough to give the most medicated of post-feminist writers a stroke. Hormone Warzone featured the sisters dressed up in various archetypal guises (the mad housewife, the hippie crone, and the bland bimbo) discussing such feisty and problematic feminist issues as birth control and abortion. As this eerie video successfully made both men and women look like idiots for the suppression of procreation, it could be said that it was the kind of satire that took no hostages. It was also as if at that point, the Hummers decided to make a concession to their origins as rabble-rousers who were concerned with the politics of the female body. Perhaps it was provoked by the bombing of Dr. Henry Morgentaler’s clinics, or by a true desire to inject some estrogen into the creation of video art. Although rough around the edges, as destiny is informed by budget as much as it is by gender, Hormone Warzone is a bit of a masterpiece that I believe is rarely screened, although, it would be considered to be milder than the average content you see in B.U.S.T. or B.I.T.C.H. magazine. Once again, this video was way ahead of its time, as what was considered to be feminist in those days is now considered to be merely a feminine point of view. Nowadays this type of synergy between feminine and feminist would be identified as post-feminist. Both in terms of its content, and given the resistance in Toronto to the discussion of such matters, it is amazing to me that it exists at all.

In the spring of 1984, the Hummers turned their attention back to local politics with a series of Video Cabarets that featured an electronic symposium that included John Sewell, Bruce Kidd, and others quizzing electoral candidates Dale Martin, Susan Eng, and Peter Mahoney. This was a lead-up to their next production, Power Play, which used the same presentational devices that were used in Tory Tory Tory to document the 1984 Liberal Leadership Convention. This time, politicians such as John Turner and John Cretien were given the “Hummer Treatment” as their talking heads were manipulated via editing to “tell the truth”. This event was also hosted by the slick Tom Tube and interspersed with commentary from Wanda Whiplash, Darlene Daily, and Barb Honey.
In November 1984, The Hummer Sisters were invited to take part in VideoCulture Canada, a mass presentation of video art from across the country that took place at Ontario Place. The Hummers’ contribution was a piece called Dress To Kill, a pre-recorded video produced by Ed Mowbray and Rick Simon that featured music by Billy Bryans, Mojah, and Christopher Gerard Pinker. In this installation, a sign indicated to viewers that representatives of Personal Video Services will demonstrate their product five times a day. Onscreen, Dean, Burke, and Taylor impersonated various female icons including Maria (States of Grace), Eva (Gates of Hell), Trixie (The Hooker Next Door), and unveiled this year’s model with the song, “The Well Dressed Girl is Wearing Balls This Spring!” In much the same vein as Where’s Fluffy and Hormone Warzone, this piece took an accurately directed swipe at female beliefs and pretensions.

In 1985 Deanne Taylor and VideoCabaret began to take a great interest in mas (short for masquerade), designs central to the celebrations of Caribbean carnival. Taylor introduced guest artists from Trinidad to Shadowland, a group of theatre artists (including Leida Englar, Brad Harley, Anne Barber and Luisa Millan, and others) and launched an annual tradition of exchanging artists and creating mas. This older Caribbean form of satire involved elaborate masks and props, which often mock and mimic the ruling elite. This use of caricature and exaggeration has greatly influenced both the style and forms of production at Shadowland, and VideoCabaret, and they have collaborated on political cabarets, Caribana bands, and Hollingsworth’s cycle of plays The History of the Village of the Small Huts (which satirizes Canadian history from pre-Confederation to the present). The influence of mas was evident in Taylor’s operatic masterwork, Second Nature, which was an extended meditation on the biological operations of the female body and nature at large.

In 1985, in honour of the Municipal Election, The Hummers pioneered their first Vox Pop (short for vox populi, voice of the people). This cabaret, which continued the tradition of ART vs Art, was hosted by Alan Bridle as Tom Tube. The Hummers’ nightly performance was accompanied by musicians Ronnie Wiseman and Rick Sacks, and designed by Shadowland, who created mas type head pieces for the characters Freedom, License, Mind, Doubt, Pollster, Vote, and Media, who provoked or discouraged the central character, Everyperson.
In 1988, the Hummers conducted a second Vox Pop to cover several intersecting events including the American election, the Canadian federal election, and the Toronto municipal election. Aside from the usual interviews, sketches, and altered videotapes, guests at this event were treated to guests from the past (a crossover from Hollingsworth’s Village of the Small Huts series) such as William Lyon Mackenzie (Eric Keenleyside) and Sir John A. MacDonald (Tom Butler). This Vox Pop featured an innovation that asked the audience to pose questions to the studio guests. A popular mainstay of the 1988 Vox Pop was the evil Dr. Tory (played by the talented Ted Johns) who improvised the most evasive, bureaucratic double-talk ever featured on any screen – big or small. A 12-minute video, The Great Debate, which freely altered the words of John Turner, Brian Mulroney, and Ed Broadbent, was a frequently played gem. People were literally on the floor laughing over the Hummers’ take on Canadian politics. Five words: “you had to be there!”

Second Nature transported the Hummers back to the realm of the body politic but also out of the realm of the cabaret format and into the mainstage spaces at the Theatre Centre and later at theatre Passe Muraille. Written and directed by Deanne Taylor, it was performed by Janet Burke, Jennifer Dean, Ellie Ray Hennessey, Maggie Huculak, Mary Ellen Mahoney, Deborah Theaker, Maria Vacratsis, and Karen Woolridge.

A summation of several influences that are distinctly “Hummer”, Second Nature takes place inside the head and loins of woman while she experiences the process of creating life – from conception to birth – and the mind-body debate within her daughter’s body as she grows from infant to modern superwoman. This full-scale epic work included nineteen small arches encasing video screens as well as a full back screen upon which was projected graphics and video. The live video was orchestrated backstage by artists who filmed themselves putting maquettes or props on turntables or on their bodies. Amazingly, there was only one pre-recorded image in the entire two-hour event.

The influence of mas was also seen in this production which boasted a bright pink and red set and brilliant, jewel-toned costumes and headdresses. The play boasted a chorus as well as characters based on anatomical and psychological concepts such as Auto, Ovary, Cardia, Gusta, Doc, and Volo. The set was a dome-like construction that represented “orders of the body politic” and graced with sensual curves. The video monitors that ringed the set were filled with lively images of hormones, nerves, and memory ion a constant state of play.

This remarkable production, which was scored by Brent Snyder, was a joyous and funny celebration of the female body as well as a witty and profoundly insightful look at the nature of life. The text also constantly referred to the body as a metaphor for all things to come: socially, politically, and personally.

It seems that the nature of life is not far from the nature of performance. It is, as the character, Cardio (who represents the heart), in Second Nature says: “a death defying act of order, a balancing act between chaos and obsession.”

Given the fact that poverty often defines the measure and scope of an artist’s life in Canada, the Hummers have managed to provide audiences with high-quality satire that neither stumbles to the level of a cartoon or prolapses into eye-glazing self-referentiality. There is a homemade quality to the Hummers’ work that through the years has defied labels and, in fact, managed to turn the tables on the media by using their own devices against them to expose idiocy, contradictions, and the greater philosophical implications of life. Couched safely in satire, their work has defied the usual labels, and though I would hesitate to call them feminists, I would not hesitate to call, them artists who were exploring the nature of “what is feminine.” Their adherence to exploring this definition through the use of didactic dialogue and symbolist characters is ultimately what gave the Hummers’ work a post-feminist thrust that was highly unusual for its time. As is the case with most true satirists, The Hummer Sisters’ body of work, which is a whole politic in itself that could be debated for a hundred years with no results, has been Brechtian in its desire to be corrective in nature. Feminist or not, the Hummers, like all satirists, are warriors and subversives whose works still provoke feminist vs. post-feminist discussions among critics and historians.