When I first saw The OpenField Artists, I had not known what to expect when I walked into the warmth of The Strensrud to see some art, hear some music, and watch a performance. That’s all I knew. I was in for a treat when The OpenField Artists (OFA) previewed their MonkeyRiding Buddhas show. I returned to The Strensrud the following Friday to experience the full performance.

Walking into the space of The Strensrud, I immediately noticed a giant canvas covering one of the front windows. Scattered about on the ledge below the window were various artist’s tools, brushed, buckets, paint, glue. During the performance, I soon learned, “Johnny Art” would be creating a spontaneous painting that fed off of the energy of the performance, as well as the energy of the crowd, while at the same time telling his own story.

From the beginning, The OFA created a sense of community, building trust with their audience by including their audience in the performance. They accomplished this with an interactive piece in which four members of The OFA stood in the performance space. The person stage right selected a portion of the audience, claiming it, and instructed them to clap their hands along with her. The OFA to her right, the audience’s left, selected a portion of the audience, claiming it as his, and instructed them to stomp their feet. The OFA to shout HEY YO! The fourth OFA selected and claimed her section of audience and instructed them to shout TELL ME THE TRUTH. Everyone in the building was clapping their hands, stomping their feet and shouting. The effect was tremendous, causing those of us in the audience to feel a part of the performance, but, more importantly, to feel a part of each other. Now we were ready to listen, watch, learn, experience joy and sorrow, happiness and beauty.

And, over the course of the next few hours, we did experience many emotions. The performance was a testament to the power of art in people’s lives. The power of art, in its many incarnations, to bring people together and to empower them as recipients of art, and to empower the performers and artists at the same time.

The Welcoming Committee featured two of The OFA who welcomed a variety of seekers, convincing the seekers that they, The Welcoming Committee, had the solution to whatever problem the seekers had, when, in reality, it became clear that The Welcoming Committee were selling things with the same type of marketing found in AS SEEN ON TV ads. But the seekers always bought the snake oil. One person wanted to be an instructor, and was told that, Oh, yes, we have what you need. That course takes three days, one day for each level. But we’ll start you on the third day and charge you for all three. The rest of the skit went on in the same way, with the seekers being convinced that The Welcoming Committee had the answers for them, while truly, The Welcoming Committee was merely exploiting the needs of others for their own gain. The piece, as with all of the pieces in The MonkeyRiding Buddhas, worked because it exposed truths in all of us without being preachy.

The Welcoming Committee went away for a while, so that a beautiful waltz could be danced. The waltz was charged with the needing and wanting of two people (lovers?) who want to make a connection with one another, but their own internal struggles prevent them from breaking down their walls completely enough for a real connection to occur.

After the waltz a man lost on his way to the Ole’s gas station and convenience store brought back The Welcoming Committee, who would gladly give him directions for “a nominal fee”, which, if memory serves, was somewhere in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars. In this instance, our seeker hero walked away from The Welcoming Committee, showing us, subtly, that we can learn, and refuse the “help” of people who try to manipulate us in the guise of being helpful.

One of the successes of MonkeyRiding Buddhas was the breaking up of longer pieces, like The Welcoming Committee, with other works, like the waltz. This sort of presentation kept the audience’s attention, and also allowed the audience to process what they were experiencing, while continuing to take in more information and experiences. Accessible, straightforward pieces were couched between less accessible pieces, and no one in the audience ever felt completely lost. If they didn’t “get it”, they knew, because they trusted the performers, that they would be sufficiently led, and they would eventually get it, or at least find a work that they could wrap their heads around.

Let’s not forget the painting. It was almost as if the painting were not taking place, but as the show progressed, the painting began taking on a life of its own. It was beautiful.

Next was a contemporary dance piece, featuring the music of Tool and the very intense dancing of Naga Nataka and Abby Stevens. The struggling for connection in this piece mirrored the struggle in the earlier waltz, but was much more visceral and driven, almost violent. It was beautiful and exhausting to watch. Some of the words that I scribbled while watching: sex, relation-slips, power, struggle, individuality, self, losing of the self in another.

Heidi Junkersfeld’s performance of spoken word piece written by Nataka was chilling. The piece itself is chilling. A woman paces the stage while speaking a soliloquy peppered with familiar landmarks in Missoula, familiar stereotypes, familiar hopes and fears. The entire time she’s speaking, she is dragging on the ground a dead body draped in an American Flag. Sax/ violin set a somber mood

“I drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes because it’s easier,” she confesses. And one can see that she is not proud of this fact, she wants to be a better person than she is, as we all do. So she goes on to tell us about her yoga practice and some of the other things that make her whole. And she gets defensive.

“You have to be able to DEFEND yourself.”

She speaks these words loudly, and in her face, we can see that sometimes she doesn’t believe them. She’s trying to talk herself into believing the words she speaks, for we live in confusing times. She’s remembering the advice of her father, “Honey, you gotta be able to back yourself up in any conversation, you have to be able to…”

Defend yourself.

“It’s a good thing I know so much,” she says, trying to convince us, trying to convince herself, the way many of us do in the same fashion. The piece takes us all to task, holding a mirror up to us, but does so in a gentle way, without judgment or chastisement.

After the dancing and performance art finished, we were treated to some beautiful singing by Lee Macafee and Heidi.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some things here, but this is what I was able to slap together from my scribbled notes. I’ll stop by again tomorrow to talk more about The Open Field Artists, who will be performing this First Friday at The Loft.