Shaboom! Hits Provincetown
by Steve Desroches
The phrase “failure is not an option” is credited to NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz, portrayed by Ed Harris in the 1995 film Apollo 13, about the dramatic and successful rescue of three astronauts stuck in space after an accident during a mission to the moon. But as we all know, except those soaking in toxic positivity, failure is always an option, something NASA itself would sadly learn many times over in subsequent space travel. Failure is a certainty in life. It’s often how we learn and grow. It’s overcoming the fear of failure that’s important. In a chaotic world we often look to the arts to give us order and understanding. But what if art embraced failure and the chaos and the mania? What if the result wasn’t the point, but rather the process and you just let the chips fall where they may, left for others to interpret, embrace, or just ignore?
The thrill of the possibility of completely blowing it is at the core of Shaboom!, a “spectacle teetering on the edge of disaster” created by artists Silky Shoemaker, Lex Vaughan, and Paul Soileau that’s returning to the Gifford House after a thunderbolt of a debut last summer that shook the town’s creative community. Imagine crossing a set of monkey bars, reaching out and letting go before the next bar is clearly in sight. Falling could happen, but so could a successful swing to the next and so and so on. That’s Shaboom!
Born in 2016 out of the OUTsider Fest, an LGBTQ arts event in Austin, Texas, that celebrates non-conformity, the earliest form of Shaboom! was as an after-party to the festival. It grew out of white water rapids rather than a stream-of-consciousness, where each artist proposed an idea and the other two would grab on for the ride and add their own contributions. Cardboard sets, outlandish costumes, numerous props, all mixed with an absurdist and slapstick style in skits and vignettes put through a queer prism gave Shaboom! a firm footing on “controlled chaos open to chance,” says Soileau, perhaps better known by one of his performance personas, drag terrorist Christeene.
“We all come from different performance backgrounds of our own,” says Soileau. “It was a great cocktail. We all worked great together. We had a hot potato on our hands.”
“It’s a lot of mining each other’s brains,” says Vaughan.
“There’s a trust fall element to it,” says Shoemaker. “It started as a party after a festival. I feel like the audience is invited to our slutty town.”
With Shoemaker based in central Pennsylvania, Soileau in Brooklyn, and Vaughan in Los Angeles, it is a special occasion when Shaboom! assembles, performing in Austin, New York City, and London most frequently, with Provincetown becoming an August tradition at the Wilde Playhouse at the Gifford House. All speaking to Provincetown Magazine via Zoom from their respective homes, Shoemaker, Soileau, and Vaughan, say that Provincetown has become a special place as the town gets them and embraces their mad experimentation. And the town’s arts community embraced them as they received frequent invites to after-hours dinners, parties, and just quiet conversations about the big ideas, inane chit chat, cerebral flashes, and laughter that often provides the fuel of Provincetown’s art colony for decades. Not that they judge people who don’t appreciate the show. That unto itself is as gratifying as rapturous applause.
“We embrace it all,” says Soileau. “And I love if someone walks out the show because that will force them to think about why they left. That’s valuable.”
“Yeah, I love when someone comes up after the show and says that they loved and are coming back the next night, but that their boyfriend left early and went home,” says Vaughan.
Explaining exactly what an evening at Shaboom! will be like is futile and defeats the purpose of this kind of art and theater. But consider the boat ride through the psychedelic tunnel in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The crazed candymaker admits he doesn’t know where they’re going as the paddle boat increases in speed and feverish images flash all around prompting all the children and the adults to squeal and moan in terror with Violet Beauregarde screaming out. “What is this, a freak-out?” But Charlie turns to his grandfather and says “This is kind of strange,” to which Grandpa Joe responds, “Yes. Strange Charlie. But it’s fun!” Charlie and Grandpa Joe would love Shaboom! And with life in general feeling like that tunnel these days with a mad man at the helm of the ship, Shaboom! is shredding the sails.
“This show is a little more subdued and a little darker,” says Shoemaker. “It doesn’t have the ignorant glee we usually have.”
Vaughan says with the times being such a “dick kick,” they can’t rely on aw shucks and the golly gees of the past. It’s time to roll in
the mud, stand up, and double down.
“We’re evolving,” says Soileau. “We’re creating patterns of what we create. What we’re experimenting with is that we really don’t know what we’re always going to do. We feel this connection. We’re a collective moving forward creating ideas that relate to the world.”
The thoughtful fearlessness in their approach and demeanor is refreshing as it seems those ideals and institutions that were meant to protect us are falling like dominos. But if you expect failure, how can the result of your actions matter more than the process that created them. The process is the point.
“We had a reviewer recently describe us as ‘self-indulgent,’” says Vaughan. “And we were like, ‘Uh huh. What’s your point?’”
Shaboom! is at the Gifford House, 9 Carver St., Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, through August 24 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets ($35) are available at the door and online at gifford.house. For more information call 508.487.0688.
