LACE GALLERY LINEUP : PERFORMANCE ARTISTS TO SPEAK OUT

“They’re funny, they’re outrageous, they’re unafraid” is how the publicist for LACE Gallery describes the artists who are coming to LACE in “Hear Me Roar--A Performance Series Starring the Outspoken of Our Time,” which features appearances by Pat Oleszko (Friday), the Thunder Thigh Review (Oct. 16), Karen Finley (Oct. 17 and 18), Sandra Bernhard (Oct. 23) and Kathy Acker (Oct. 25).

Beyond the collective title, however, comparisons quickly end.

Performance artist Oleszko will be bringing her thoughts on global armament to bear in “War ‘n’ Piece: Where Fools Russian,” which she describes as “my new-clear piece.”

“In the past, my work hasn’t been so specifically political as this recent piece,” she acknowledged. (Here, Oleszko will don armor, show films, lecture and manipulate robots to shape her point.) Yet the presence of comedy, she added, “is all. Not all funny , but it covers the range of humor: from disbelief to satire, parody and irony.

“I have my sculpture on myself,” she said, “and I exist within society--so that the events I attend, that I caricature, are real-life things.” Although she often takes on institutions, Oleszko is equally critical of herself: “My last piece, ‘The Soiree of O,’ was about me playing the fool, making a fool of myself, living as a fool in society.”

Joyce Scott and Kay Waters Lawal, (a.k.a. the Thunder Thigh Review) are presenting “Women of Substance,” which Scott describes as a “playette” about “women and sex and fat and how they’re all balled up.

“One of the themes that runs through,” she continued, “is how the refrigerator not only represents a storehouse of pleasure and relief to us--but also represents a man, a controlling factor in our lives. And there’s a lot about obsession: that we use food sometimes to get us through--where other people smoke, use drugs. It’s also about society’s reaction to our obsession.”

Added Lawal: “What we say is, ‘We’re big, we’re beautiful’--and women should feel good about themselves wherever they are in their lives. So some of it is sad, but there’s also a lot of joy.”

A darker side of human experience is explored by Karen Finley.

“I go into different monologues,” she said, “talk in different voices. I take on female, male, child, abuser and abused, a different point of view on (characters) who’ve been hurt, abused--and how many have held in that secret for years.”

Finley has no qualms about the unease and nervous laughter that often accompanies her frequently graphic and shocking work: “As a performance artist, I don’t really care how people respond. That’s their responsibility. Mine is simply to give out the information.”

Comedienne Sandra Bernhard describes her show (co-authored with John Boskovitch) as combining “elements of comedy and theater and music and performance art--with a kind of ironic twist.”

“This is just my act,” she pointed out. “I did part of it (earlier this year) at the Beverly Theatre, but a lot of it is new, extended, revised. The reason we’re doing it in this setting is that there are elements of performance art in what I’m doing--that starkness and emotion--without the attitude .”

Although she doesn’t enjoy pigeonholing or analyzing her work, Bernhard allowed the influence of “every woman who fought in the ‘70s. So I’m the reflection of all the fighting, all that anger. I’m like the confident, evolved woman.”

A change of pace in the series comes with London-based Kathy Acker, who’s on a national tour to promote her novel, “Don Quixote.”

“It’ll just be a reading,” she explained. “Grove Press (her publisher) is sending me around to talk about the new book, but I’ll actually be reading from a novel that’s halfway finished, called ‘Empire of the Senseless.’ ” (“Empire,” Acker offered, “is your basic science fiction novel” featuring spies, secret codes and an Algerian revolution.)

As for a persistent “punk” label, she says, “Punk is a dead issue. Most people now describe me as ‘post-modernist’--a terrible word. What I do is write strange novels.”