Anya Liftig expresses her desire to overcome failure by living entirely on Triscuits and having people pour glue all over her naked body.

She's also a nice Jewish girl.

With a mamma from backwoods Kentucky and a father from a super-Jewish neighborhood in Connecticut, Liftig draws inspiration from her family history to create a performance narrative called Jewbilly: An Exploration into Identity. It has a profound "sense of dislocation...[a] sense of being pulled in a lot of directions."

Liftig approaches the stage with an other worldly presence, attempting to connect with an audience while obviously remaining separate physically. This is a central theme to her work:

"A lot of my work is about failure...and trying to overcome failure--the space in between things where things are failing to meet up. And...one reason why I was compelled to do this piece is that it explains where that comes from. If I wasn't an artist, [these issues] would plague me as a person."

With a screen behind her flashing still photos of her family, images of dead grandparents, family vacations, childhood memories and the scenery of her two worlds, both Christian and culturally (though not especially religious) Jewish, Anya Liftig takes us on an adventure that starts in the old world and winds up in her world. More a reading than a performance, Jewbilly is hilarious, depressing, insightful and entertaining all at once.

Is it hard to live in two worlds? According to Liftig, it's about how you are raised. "[My parents] would show, by example, that they were interested in each other and that whatever differences they had were actually similarities."

And what about the grown up Liftig, who remembers having a menorah and a Christmas tree? "I culturally identify as a Jew although I am very non-religious. The idea of questioning is at the heart of Jewish inquiry and I think is very much related to artistic inquiry."

Perhaps this is the great strength of Jewishness: that the Jewish life, in a way, is performance art. It's about how you live; the way you live the identity that is both created for you, and subsequently reinterpreted by you. And we should be proud to have someone like Liftig to set this example.

 

www.anyaliftig.com

There is at least one thing I like about the creationist worldview.

Before I get to that, let me back up. In my year of exploring the Bible and biblical literalism, I made a pilgrimage to the just-opened Creation Museum in Kentucky. For those who missed the recent spate of news stories, the Creation Museum is the $25 million museum founded by the evangelical Christian group Answers in Genesis, and devoted to proving the earth is 6,000 years young.

It’s a fascinating place. You can see a scale model of Noah’s Ark. You can watch animatronic dinosaurs playing next to animatronic cave people (they lived at the same time, in the creationist scenario). There’s a screening room with sprinklers to simulate the Flood.

There’s also a bookstore that includes such titles as Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, which spends 300 pages outlining the brilliant engineering that made the famous boat possible. There are chapters on the ventilation system, on-board exercise for the animals and the myth of explosive manure gases.

The book is beautifully argued – and I don’t believe a syllable of it. Which I know is counter to my quest. I went down to the museum with an open mind, but while down there, I realized my mind wouldn’t open that far. I could understand being open to the existence of God and the beauty of rituals and the benefits of prayer. But the existence of a brontosaurus on the ark? And an earth that’s barely older than Gene Hackman? I have to go with 99 percent of scientists on this one.

That said, I did spend some time trying to imagine what it would be like to be a creationist. I tried a little method acting and put myself in the mind of someone who believes the earth was formed 6000 years ago. I couldn’t 100 percent believe, but for a few minutes, I almost believed it.

And it was an amazing experience. Most notably, I felt more connected. Consider this: If everyone on earth is descended from two identifiable people – Adam and Eve – then the “family of man” isn’t just a vague cliche. It’s true. The guy who sells me bananas at the deli on 81st street – he’s my cousin. Sure, you can have the same notion if you accept the reality that humans have evolved over several millennia. But it’s not nearly as concrete. The creationist mindset made me feel closer to my fellow humans. It made me want to invite strangers over to dinner.

I’ll never convert to creationism, but I have tried to keep that palpable sense of ‘we’re-all-related’ that came with it.

This could be a photo of a maintenance worker at the Museum of Natural History, touching up the scenery of a Utahraptor exhibit. Actually, it's a still-life from the soon-to-open Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky -- sort of a Universal Studios for the willfully ignornant and purblind adherents of Genesis.

Age of Earth? 6,000 years.

Grand Canyon origin? Noah's flood

Greatest danger outside the Garden of Eden? Dinosaurs.

Institutional stupidity furnished with vivid detail and animatronics? $27 million.