It’s not every day that someone on the island presents a multi-media, performance art, comedy piece that encourages bitching.
But that’s all in the past.
Chelsea Bonacello is taking the big leap and doing something she’s wanted to do for a decade. Bonacello presents “Bitchfest #1,” at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 24 at Deer Lagoon Grange Hall in Langley.
“When the going gets tough, the tough do performance art,” Bonacello said.
“I love making people laugh and I love weaving the talent of my peers together to make magic out of despair.”
Those talents include singer Kattee Bierce and filmmaker Aleah Chapin. Bonacello creates improvisatory monologues next to the films of Chapin and Bierce’s voice to create a piece that, she said, presents a response to her journey through mid-life and her connection to all the working women she encounters.
“I’ve hit a lot of rough waters in my life. But this island and all the women on this island, are what keeps me alive,” Bonacello said.
Bonacello has a master of fine arts in film and video from California Institute of the Arts and has been active in a variety of city arts scenes for decades, including stints doing political street theater, helping to create The Kit Kat Club — a “people’s cabaret” — in Seattle, as a lead singer for a women’s punk rock band, creating a women’s musical operetta in the Japanese Noh style of theater entitled “Noh Special Effects (in the age of darkness),” and a solo series in San Francisco called “Vampire in Heat” that aimed awareness at the increased military presence of the U.S. in the Middle East. She also led a “Take Back the Night” march in the Bay Area, as well as a Reject Festival film series in Los Angeles, among other politically active theatrical endeavors.
Bonacello said that “Bitchfest #1” is not so much a complaint, but the kind of tough, edgy, spontaneous, gutsy and messy theater she’s always appreciated.
She thinks that the piece will lighten people’s spirits, especially working women.
She’s a working-class female herself — a painting contractor — who is reaching out to all the other working girls who need a boost like she does in these information-laden times of recession, pop star celebrity deaths or perhaps just menopause.
“Well, for me it’s kind of, get back on the stage or literally die,” she said.
“As I find my place in the community I become an oracle and things go through me so that whatever needs to be said is said. I do get mad and I do get loud, but that’s not all I do.”
Finding her place in the community is important and that includes finding a connection to the younger generation and giving back what she can.
Also a cellist, Bonacello works with the Whidbey Island Community Orchestra as a mentor. She has also found a place with the Artists of South Whidbey as a painter and was proud to have helped with its summer show at the Island County Fairgrounds, and to have become in general a more active volunteer on the island.
The approximately 90-minute show will include three short films by Chapin, who is a student at Cornish College of the Arts. They include “Flux,” “The Investigator” and a film called “Money,” which first captured Bonacello’s attention at the Clyde Theatre’s RainDance Short Film Festival in Langley. “Money” is an homage to the film animator Jan Svankmajer, a Czechoslovakian surrealist.
“I love Svankmajer. We both love surrealism. Aleah is only 22 and I was so happy to discover this connection with her.”
It’s those kind of discoveries that she enjoys so readily and notices often as she moves through her life on Whidbey.
Although Bonacello said she’s traveled a bumpy road in life, the world of women’s theater and film has always given her a map with which to navigate her feelings. It was what she saw on the stage and screen that had the ability to heal her in the hardest moments of her life.
“The theater is a magic place where time is slowed down and the most beautiful moments are revealed,” she said. “I use it to give something back.”
Tickets for “Bitchfest #1” cost $10 for adults, $8 for seniors and $5 for youths. For details, call 360-303-2049.
