Karen Finley’s “The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery,” a Fantastical Look at the Political Landscape

Karen Finley in “The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery” (Photo courtesy of Carolina Restrepo at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club / REDCAT)

Over the past four decades, performance artist Karen Finley has fearlessly confronted sexuality, feminism, celebrity, politics, and power in a series of provocative, incendiary works. She has appeared onstage slathered in chocolate, or in the guise of Martha Stewart, the fictional paramour of George W. Bush, in her 2004 satirical play George & Martha.  In 1990, she found herself at the center of that era’s culture wars when she was dubbed one of the NEA Four, a group of artists who were denied NEA funding based on “decency” grounds.

With irreverent humor and searing insight, Finley tackles our current political miasma in her latest theatrical work, The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery. Though three non-linear, but related segments, she assumes the roles of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the mythical unicorn, at once a symbol of unattainable freedom and white elitism.

When: Thursday, October 12–Sunday, October 15, 8:30pm nightly, except Sunday at 7pm ($12-$25)
Where: Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) (631 West 2nd Street, Downtown, Los Angeles)

More info here.