In June, I profiled a series of short pieces presented for Risk/Reward’s Festival of New Performance. Known onstage as audacious drag clown Carla Rossi, Anthony Hudson presented a piece that stood out for its exciting exploration of Native American cultural assimilation via Cher’s Half Breed and the 1954 Peter Pan Broadway musical number “Ugg-A-Wugg” as performed by blue-eyed, blonde-haired Sondra Lee. For the 20-minute Risk/Reward preview, Hudson stripped off his clown persona and performed a large part of the piece as himself. This weekend, he debuts the full show in Portland at the Hollywood Theatre for two nights. He showed up to our interview wearing a beautiful pink and purple cosmic skull t-shirt. Here’s what happened next.
MERCURY: What are you trying to accomplish with Looking for Tiger Lily?
ANTHONY HUDSON: My drama teacher in high school—who was the only reason I didn’t drop out of high school—always said theater was to educate, enlighten, and entertain. That’s basically been my approach ever since.
Because Carla is a drag clown, not a drag queen.
Exactly. I’ve always been interested in Carla being this trickster character—on the edge between satire, reification, and critique. In Looking for Tiger Lily, there’s this whole dream sequence where I’m talking with Grandmother Willow after I’ve sung a Pocahontas song in my canoe. I can’t help but laugh every time because it’s so stupid but then you also have moments where there are no slides. There’s no music and it’s just me.
