Like Kermit the Frog once said, it’s not easy being green.
But the Bearded Ladies Cabaret is set to dig in and do it anyway. Philadelphia’s renowned experimental cabaret company is taking its penchant for engaging, entertaining outdoors spectacles into a lush and fertile garden setting for a special performance Aug. 18 at the Delaware Art Museum.
“Bitter Homes & Gardens” features singing and dancing flowers, ferns, vegetables and weeds, addressing what life is like for plants. Yeah, we know. It sounds like a heady concept and way too Discovery Channel for the genre-pushing and sometimes-ribald troupe, but John Jarboe, the group’s artistic director and founder, said it’s not that much of a stretch for them.
“The Bearded Ladies are not your average cabaret show,” Jarboe said. “We create performative poison cookies — delicious, nostalgic and a little dangerous. So since we’re always playing with voice and identity, taking on the voice and identity of plant life, or trying to and failing at it, [it] feels like its in our wheelhouse. The premise of the show is that there’s a GMO corn, Jebediah Eatin-Good, who is touring around the country and there is a battle that is waged between the GMOs and the non-GMOs in the show.”
The botanical-themed show is inspired by a popular magazine article, Michal Pollan’s “The Intelligent Plant” in the New Yorker, which suggested that humans treat plants as “protagonists in their own dramas.”
“That was kind of the seed for this whole project,” Jarboe said. “From that article, we began to talk about our relationship with plants, especially our relationship with plants in the city and about the food that we are eating. That article particularly talked about can we apply the word ‘intelligence’ to plants or not? In a very cerebral-centric world, what can we learn from how plants exist, structure things and communicate? If we put that on stage, how would we dramatize that?”
This particular piece was created for performances at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s pop-up beer gardens, where it premiered last summer.
“The piece really folds into their mission: bringing green space and awareness of the importance of green space into the city,” Jarboe said about PHS. “That’s something that the Delaware Art Museum [promotes]. It’s so gorgeous and they have this beautiful sculpture garden outdoors. We’re going to be performing among these beautiful sculptures. We’re trying, in the funniest and most ridiculous way possible, to ask the questions: What do plants want? What is their voice? Can we give them a voice? And if we could, what would they say? What would they complain about? What would they want?”
Don’t get worried by the intellectual and metaphysical nature of the source material; the Ladies are still going to find a way to inject their visual flair, biting social commentary and signature brand of humor into the show’s deep and abstract thoughts.
“Jebediah wants everybody to conform,” Jarboe said. “It’s going to be interesting. All of our pieces chance change with the socio-political context. Even though there are stories, a script and an arc, we adapt each piece to its location and its time. The political battle that is happening right now will become very present. But Jebediah is very pro-GMO, pro-pop-up garden, very nationalist and pro-American. He might be a Trump supporter. I’m not sure, we haven’t decided yet. Throughout the course of the cabaret, we get to the point where we pop him and make him into popcorn and eat him. Our work is very cartoony in this show. The costumes are huge. They barely fit into a car and transporting them is really hard. Our costume designers made these glorious plant sculptures that we wear out of moldable fabric. They’re really cool.”
Jarboe also said the show will feature Bearded versions of classic songs by Bill Withers, Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Faith Hill, as well as some originals.
“There’s a three-person band,” he said about the show’s musical element. “The music has a very country vibe to it but it’s a bunch of different tunes. There’s some Bob Dylan and some Joni Mitchell. There’s a RaeLynn song called ‘God Made Girls,’ which we’ve rewritten to be ‘God Made Plants’ because in my opinion it’s a very misogynist song about ‘girls have to serve their man.’ So we rewrote that to be about plants serving their man. There’s a bunch of popular tunes and then, as always, original arrangements.”
Even though the outdoor show will contain somewhat-adult humor, families and young kids are welcome to attend. Jarboe said Bearded Ladies performances are meant to be fun and social learning experiences for everyone.
“One of the things that the Beard tries to do everywhere we go is talk directly to the community and create a space where the community can laugh at itself and laugh at us and be in a room together,” he said. “That’s what they are bringing us there to do and what we are going to do there.”
The Bearded Ladies present “Bitter Homes & Gardens” 6:30 p.m. Aug. 18 at Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, Del. For more information visit, www.delart.org, www.beardedladiescabaret.com or call 302-571-9590.