IN JUNE, the Mercury profiled a series of short pieces presented for Risk/Rewardâs Festival of New Performance. Known onstage as audacious drag clown Carla Rossi, a new work from Anthony Hudson stood out for its exploration of Native American cultural assimilation via Cherâs Half Breed and the 1954 Peter Pan Broadway musical number âUgg-A-Wuggâ as performed by blue-eyed, blonde-haired Sondra Lee. For the 20-minute Risk/Reward preview, Anthony Hudson stripped off Carla Rossi's clown persona and performed a large part of the piece as the Anthony side of Anthony / Carla. This weekend, a full show of Looking for Tiger Lily debuts in Portland at the Hollywood Theatre for two nights. Anthony Hudson / Carla Rossi met us in a cafe to talk about how the show expanded to a full-length production.
This interview has been condensed for clarity.
MERCURY: What are you trying to accomplish with Looking for Tiger Lily?
ANTHONY HUDSON: My drama teacher in high schoolâwho was the only reason I didnât drop out of high schoolâalways said theater was to educate, enlighten, and entertain. Thatâs basically been my approach ever since.
Because Carla is a drag clown, not a drag queen.
Exactly. Iâve always been interested in Carla being this trickster characterâon the edge between satire, reification, and critique. In Looking for Tiger Lily, thereâs this whole dream sequence where Iâm talking with Grandmother Willow after Iâve sung a Pocahontas song in my canoe. I canât help but laugh every time because itâs so stupid but then you also have moments where there are no slides. Thereâs no music and itâs just me.
Yes. As a white person, Iâm excited about the use of PowerPoint in this performance.
Iâm going to put that on the poster for the show.
No, seriously, how much PowerPoint can we expect?
The entire show is run through Keynote, which relates to my father. Heâs the main inspiration for this piece. He was a social worker, and when I was in my teens I traveled with him to different state conferences where he gave presentations about the importance of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Thatâs really where I learned about all the wrongs that had been done to us. Thatâs where I learned about intergenerational trauma and assimilation.
But the 1954 Peter Pan musical with Sondra Lee also informed you.
Yes! Sondra Lee, who is my Tiger Lily.
And you still love that song.
Itâs stupid. Itâs joyful. Itâs old classic Broadway. For me, âUgg-A-Wuggââas awful as it is with all the Indian gibberishânever came across as mean spirited. The whole Broadway production of Peter Pan reads like children just playing and having fun. I just recently learned this, but the New York Times in 1905 called the representation of Native Americans in Peter Pan less a representation of actual Natives and more a weird mishmash of Natives that had been collected by the British Empire. Thereâs this weird tendency to try to legitimize it and to make it not racist.
Oh! Thatâs something I had never considered. That Peter Pan should be offensive to the viewer.
Yeah, itâs just a racist kid story!