Michael Burke: You Can't Take A Cucumber Through Airport Security
It's a cast of about 40: one man and the rest cucumbers! Read on for his airport adventures, and why it's better to shop local.
Everyone's asking what you're doing with all those cucumbers! Care to give us a hint?
Sure, but I can’t give it all away! People under estimate the many uses of Cucumbers. In my show, I have about forty cucumbers on stage with me- I do pretty much anything and everything that a subversive queer performance artist can do in public with a vegetable without getting arrested!
To give you a little taste, I eat them, I put them places, I roll around with them, I use them as props. The cucumbers act as a metaphorical and literal component in the show. I’ll leave the rest up to your imagination.
Do they really stay hard for a week?
What an excellent and thoughtful question! If you don’t rub off the wax and keep them out of the refrigerator, they will stay hard for maybe five days. Let me tell you, caring for cucumbers requires love, sensitivity, and an attention to detail. There is nothing worse than accidentally stuffing a soggy, moldy cucumber in your mouth. It’s happened to me one or two times while touring this “Cucumber Dreams.”
Tell us about a couple of your more interesting experiences doing this show.
I have performed “Cucumber Dreams” all over the United States. When I did an earlier version of the show in Georgia at the SEEN + HEARD Festival in Atlanta, I had a bizarre experience in a grocery store. In New York, no one bats an eye lash when you buy 40 Cucumbers. I’ve learned that this is not the case in other parts of the country. In Georgia, the fabulous F to M transgered performance artist, Scott “Turner” Schoefield,” accompanied me on my cucumber shopping expedition.
The two of us definitely stood out in the supermarket and heads definitely turned as we filled the cart with cuke after cuke. At the check out line, the woman behind the register could not keep a straight face. In a polite but direct manner, she said, “You must really like cucumbers!” I replied, “I love them! I’m a queer performance artist and I maintain a very strict and simple diet.”
Another time, I was at the airport in NYC very early in the morning on my way to do the show in Ohio. I was performing later that same night, so I had one bag that was filled with just the 40 cucumbers. I was pulled from the check-in countered and selected for a “random” search before I even checked my bags.
To make a long story short, I found myself alone in a room with two confused airport security guards. I tried and tried to explain that I was a performance artist and that the plethora of cucumbers were for my job. They didn’t get it and I have traveled “cucumber free” ever since then. Over the past four years, I have never gotten on an airplane without being searched in some capacity by some official person. I think maybe all of my tattoos make people think I am trouble or something? I don’t know?
Give us a short bio of you. Say four sentences at the most. The four most interesting things about Michael Burke.
Hmmm….that’s really hard! I am original from rural Idaho. Before I became a college professor/performance artist, I was a bartender and a go-go boy. I actually hate the taste of cucumbers and it is painful for me to stick them in my mouth every night when I do my show. Fortunately, I lost my gag reflex years ago!!! Is that more than four sentences?
You put together cucumbers, monkeys, and bad dates, you name it. How did this all come together in your mind... or more to the point, what's wrong with you?
Let’s not even get started with what’s wrong with me! That would be a whole new show, right? The show began because I have always had a thing for monkeys. When I learned a few years back, that the Bonobo Chimpanzees were super homo and traded food for sex, I knew that was perfect performance art fodder. The cucumber thing actually originated from a bizarre experience with a very random date/hook up with a guy who consumed an alarming number of cucumbers during the two and hours and seventeen minutes that we shared together.
I basically build my pieces as short vignettes and then connect them together. It’s like a collage and I find the connections between the different parts to create a narrative. “Cucumber Dreams” is also a lot about playing with the stereotypes associated with the genre of performance art. Think about it- playing with your food, stripping, ritual, “KoKo,” the gorilla! You know what I’m talking about!
For performance minded people, what can I get out of watching a one-person show from a purely educational standpoint, that's different from a larger cast production?
In a production with a full cast it is all about the interactions and relationships between the people on stage. With solo performance, this is a challenge and imagination is critical on all levels. Your “scene partner” is sometimes the audience, sometimes an imaginary character sitting next to you, or the space or maybe even a prop- like a cucumber. I believe watching how solo performers tackle this dilemma is extremely educational.
