Matt Fraser (UK) & Julie Atlas Muz (USA)
Beauty and the Beast, 2007
Beauty and the Beast is collaboration between Mat Fraser, British multi disciplinary performing artist and writer, and Julie Atlas Muz, American performance artist who was Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island 2006. A beauty queen in the neo burlesque scene, Muz will model Beauty after Britney Spears, the ultimate American Beauty and capitalist whore as Fraser will play the beast, using his deformity to demonize the beastly desires of humankind and the hope of deliverance from animal-like treatment.
Beauty and the Beast is a fantastical classic fairy tale that has evoked emotional attachment from generation to generation inspiring derivatives such as Phantom of the Opera, Elephant Man, Mask and King Kong where the protagonists are thought of and treated like animals until love shines through. The fairy tale Beauty and the Beast was chosen due to it’s inherent archetypal characters, as Fraser and Muz will grapple with, deconstruct and inevitably reinterpret traditional definitions of beauty and beastliness, devotion, the pain of separation, the dying of love and the transformation through love.
Inherent in Beauty and the Beast is a Judao Christian ethical prison that Fraser and Muz will not only comment on but explode as a reality worth believing in. Behind the charitable façade of religion lies a hatred of the deformed, manifested in our culture to this day.
Biographies
Mat Fraser, is arguably the UK’s best known disabled performer, mostly for his television work in the documentaries he has made, like Born Freak (2002), his study of freak shows and disabled performers in history, Happy Birthday Thalidomide (2003), and Unarmed and Dangerous (2004), and for his acting work in both feature films and shorter dramas, TV series etc, such as his leading role in the BBC’s feature Every Time You Look At Me (2004), and playing Calchas the Seer in US TV’s Helen Of Troy (2004). But his own written work has helped to change the cultural landscape of Disability in the Arts, and Disability Arts, in the UK and Internationally: His award winning one man play Sealboy:Freak (2001/2), more recently his Nationally touring show Thalidomide!! A Musical (2006/7), and his numerous cabarets, notably his popular series of shows Mat Fraser’s Sex Variety Cabarets are all ways of talking about the issues that he likes to discuss, whilst in high velocity entertainment mode; an important aspect of all his shows are that they should actually entertain people. Live Art is the place where he feels much of this can excel, and is constantly drawn to this discipline.
Julie Atlas Muz, Miss Exotic World and Miss Coney Island 2006 is one of the most acclaimed and prolific conceptual performers and choreographers in New York. Straddling the boundaries between performance art, dance and fine art with her dark, twisted, come-hither performances Muz has secured a place in the underworld of nightlife as well as the bastion of the art world. On any given night, you can see Julie Atlas Muz peeling off the outlandish costumes she dons, covered in fake blood in the basement of a gay bar or singing along with Mr. Pussy’s new track irreverent and unexpected sense of humor. Fresh from the Flying Circus Project 2007, a cultural exchange of 25 artists from different disciplines and continents touring Singapore and Vietnam, Muz proudly continues the ever political tradition of naked ladies in public spaces begun by Lady Godiva. In the US, Muz has presented her dance work nationwide with the Sex Workers Art show and in NYC at venues including the Guggenheim, Art at St. Anne’s
Warehouse, chashama, LaMama, PS 122, and Dixon Place and has exhibited her fine art at the Armory Show and at New York’s premiere gallery Dietch Projects.
