Universal Children

I first encoun­tered Whoop Dee Doo at the Time Based Arts Fes­ti­val in Port­land, Ore­gon. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with a group of youth from the Caldera arts pro­gram, they cre­at­ed a DIY body world, com­plete with diges­tive tracts, cir­cu­la­to­ry sys­tems and a bel­ly but­ton maze craft­ed out of foam, fab­ric and paper maché. Whoop Dee Doo func­tions as a faux pub­lic access tele­vi­sion pro­gram; the immer­sive envi­ron­ments that they build become the stage for a live tap­ing of their the­mat­ic vari­ety shows, which are lat­er edit­ed and uploaded to their web­site. The shows con­tain a diverse array of per­form­ers, often focus­ing on local tal­ent, as well as skits and com­pe­ti­tions that involve the live audi­ence. The mix­ture is fun­ny, absurd, chal­leng­ing, excit­ing, and often awk­ward. When the cam­era pans across the crowd we wit­ness an amus­ing mix­ture of enthu­si­as­tic chil­dren, puz­zled par­ents, and cos­tumed per­form­ers, includ­ing a dead­pan were­wolf, a wet clown and a walk­ing bag of popcorn.

Whoop Dee Doo pro­vides an inno­v­a­tive mod­el for work­ing with chil­dren. With­in the pos­i­tive and fun envi­ron­ment of the vari­ety show, the unex­pect­ed can, and often does, hap­pen: body builders dance to Ricky Mar­tin songs in Speedos; a West African Dance troupe cre­ates chore­og­ra­phy to the sound of a punk band; and kids jump on stage to show off their dou­ble joint­ed elbows. There is an almost total lack of inhi­bi­tions and lim­i­ta­tions. Watch­ing the show in the pres­ence of chil­dren who lack our adult notions of accept­able behav­iour, Whoop Dee Doo’s work makes me won­der just whose lim­its we cater to when we “child­proof” cul­ture for young people.

I talked with Whoop Dee Doo at Jaimie Warren’s stu­dio in Kansas City, Mis­souri, as mem­bers Jaimie War­ren, Matt Roche and Erin Zona attempt­ed to make 30 Hal­loween cos­tumes in one day.

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Helen Reed: So I want­ed to start off with a ques­tion that you have prob­a­bly answered a mil­lion times: how did Whoop Dee Doo start?

Matt Roche: It start­ed as a gallery show; we were try­ing to do a fake pub­lic access talk show for children.

Jaimie War­ren: It was at the Green­lease Gallery at Rock­hurst Uni­ver­si­ty. We did­n’t work with kids yet, but there were kids there and it was made to be a show for kids. It was struc­tured like a vari­ety show. In the begin­ning it was more chaot­ic, with a lot of dif­fer­ent artists doing a lot of dif­fer­ent things. I think late­ly Mat­t’s been more of a direc­tor, curat­ing and mak­ing an aes­thet­ic for the show; work­ing with a dozen artists at a time, know­ing what they do, nav­i­gat­ing who should do what, and mak­ing it look cohesive.

We thought about hav­ing these Japan­ese Butoh Dancers do some­thing with a tape­worm. But they came to us and said that they want­ed to do poop. It was a good match because you don’t usu­al­ly find Butoh dancers who want to make poop cos­tumes. They cre­at­ed a dance that was based on the diges­tive system.

Now we are try­ing to do more col­lab­o­ra­tions. For the Time Based Art Fes­ti­val a lot of the acts were dif­fer­ent sorts of col­lab­o­ra­tions. We had this basic theme of the body, so we asked peo­ple if they would alter what they do to suit this theme. We thought about hav­ing these Japan­ese Butoh Dancers do some­thing with a tape­worm. But they came to us and said that they want­ed to do poop. It was a good match because you don’t usu­al­ly find Butoh dancers who want to make poop cos­tumes. They cre­at­ed a dance that was based on the diges­tive system.

There was this West African dance troupe called Kukatonon who per­formed with a punk group called Mil­lion Brazil­ians. We had them col­lab­o­rate because Mil­lion Brazil­ians’ music is fast paced. The West African dance troupe, which is all 12–15 year old girls, cre­at­ed this new dance to a Mil­lion Brazil­ians’ song. So, that is anoth­er thing we are try­ing to do with the shows, we’re try­ing to make new con­nec­tions that might not nor­mal­ly happen.

HR: How do you find these groups of peo­ple to work with? And do you some­times feel like you have to push peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate? One of the things that I appre­ci­ate about the Whoop Dee Doo shows is that they can be pret­ty gross and per­vert­ed, and I won­der if this ever freaks out your performers.

MR: I mean we do a lot of gross stuff, because we think it’s fun­ny. It makes peo­ple uncom­fort­able some­times, but kids real­ly respond to gross stuff.

JW: Yeah, we have good inten­tions with every­thing, we nev­er intend to make peo­ple feel uncom­fort­able, but there is def­i­nite­ly a bit of bound­ary push­ing going on, but it’s not for shock val­ue or any­thing; it’s not to offend anyone.

MR: Yeah, there is def­i­nite­ly noth­ing we do that we think is inap­pro­pri­ate for a kid, because it’s always the par­ents freak­ing out, not the kids. In the Bal­ti­more show there was this blob that peo­ple were talk­ing about.

JW: Her name was Jumbo.

MR: At one point we made this big ring pop. We had a bunch of ring pops as a tran­si­tion­al thing, as one act was going off and anoth­er on, and Jum­bo said she was hun­gry and want­ed some can­dy. We brought out this ring pop and start­ed lick­ing it and then we threw ring pops into the crowd. And as harm­less as it sounds, it was­n’t meant to be any­thing gross, but there were a num­ber of adults…

JW: Well there was a giant tongue…

MR: Yeah, this tongue and a giant ring pop and they were like, “Oh…” They were pro­ject­ing some­thing onto it that was­n’t there, and that the kids weren’t see­ing. It was just a fun­ny visu­al thing, this big blob and can­dy. I remem­ber once we had this bun­ny cos­tume, and we put this white piece of cloth on the bun­ny like a dia­per. A view­er took issue with it because she thought it was some sort of sex fetish thing, like a fur­ry thing, and we were like, “Oh my god, what can we do that’s not going to be tak­en the wrong way?”

JW: Because that hon­est­ly did­n’t cross our minds and you know adults can put sex­u­al under­tones onto anything.

MR: And there are things that we do that are more obvi­ous­ly going to push some people’s but­tons. We had a heavy met­al hug­ging con­test. There was this black met­al group in Swe­den named Pagan Rites and they came on the show for a lit­tle bit and per­formed and then lead a hug­ging contest.

JW: We made a huge agree­ment that they would­n’t throw any pig blood on the kids.

Laugh­ter

HR: Is that some­thing that is a source of stress for Whoop Dee Doo? As adults we tend to project our own pre­con­ceived notions and anx­i­eties onto things, and per­haps we might even be a bit paranoid.

JW: I think so. One of the first shows we ever did, we had this Chris­t­ian fid­dling band. The mom who brought the fid­dlers in the mini van saw a drag queen at our show and so all the fid­dlers left; they did­n’t per­form. And we did this show in a fake cave that this artist made, and there was this kind of Tod­dler and Tiaras-esque group called Hol­ly­wood or Bust, there was con­tro­ver­sy with that style too: six year olds in full make up and tiny outfits.

HR: Yeah, their moves were intense.

MR: There are def­i­nite­ly stress­ful ele­ments. There are times where peo­ple think we are inten­tion­al­ly try­ing to be con­tro­ver­sial. Though, we are just try­ing to make the most enter­tain­ing show by find­ing the best local per­form­ers we can get involved.

Erin Zona: I was stand­ing back­stage in the Port­land show, we just had Col­in Self, a drag queen on and some kids that had been per­form­ing were argu­ing over whether or not Col­in Self was a girl. It turned into kind of a heat­ed moment. Then one of the kids went up to Col­in and said, “Are you a girl? Because I heard you were a boy.” They end­ed up hav­ing this whole con­ver­sa­tion about gen­der, and the kids walked away from it real­iz­ing that gen­der is com­pli­cat­ed. That’s some­thing that hap­pens at a Whoop Dee Doo show that is not on the screen. There is a lot that hap­pens live with the audi­ence and behind the stage that you don’t see on the videos.

Some­times there is this cli­mate of extreme safe­ty around chil­dren and maybe these are our own pro­jec­tions about what is and isn’t appro­pri­ate for kids.

HR: Some­times there is this cli­mate of extreme safe­ty around chil­dren and maybe these are our own pro­jec­tions about what is and isn’t appro­pri­ate for kids. I think in some envi­ron­ments that are specif­i­cal­ly “for kids” the encounter that you just described might nev­er have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hap­pen because peo­ple might think kids aren’t ready to see a drag queen yet. How do you decide what is appro­pri­ate for the show?

MR: There are def­i­nite­ly things that we don’t put on the show; we do draw the line at nudi­ty. We would­n’t let some­one come out onto the show buck-naked. Some peo­ple might look at the Pagan Rites thing and find it dis­turb­ing, but I would­n’t let some­one go on the show and do some­thing that I found dis­turb­ing. I would­n’t ever put any­thing on the show that I thought would keep these kids up at night.

JW: Yeah, I think we are aim­ing for weird in a very mem­o­rable way. I like to think about it as the stuff that you see when you are six and then sud­den­ly you are 25 or some­thing and you have some weird flash back, and you are like, “What the hell was that?” My ide­al would be that every show does that for the kids, that they would be total­ly con­fused by it and have the strangest memories.

EZ: Mem­o­ry is some­thing I think about all the time. When we’ve thought of a skit or a piece of the set, it is almost like we cre­ate it with the expec­ta­tion that the only thing that will last is the mem­o­ry of it, though we do record it. It’s like we do expect the mem­o­ry of it to be the final product.

HR: I love watch­ing the shows online and it is inter­est­ing for me to hear about the kinds of encoun­ters that hap­pen live, as well as behind the scenes. How much of the expe­ri­ence am I miss­ing when I watch the online shows?

JW: I feel like there is a lot, but it’s not stuff you could doc­u­ment, real­ly. Like when we were talk­ing about the tense moments, or the ques­tion­ing moments, or when we were talk­ing about the prepa­ra­tion work with peo­ple. Those are big parts of the show, us work­ing togeth­er, the kids work­ing with the acts. There is so much prepa­ra­tion. There are a lot of mag­ic moments that hap­pen, but I don’t know if these moments are meant to be documented.

MR: It is the oth­er stuff that is real­ly inter­est­ing, like the writ­ing, the way we put things togeth­er, the way that we make the sets. When I see the videos, they are almost hard for me to watch, because of the mem­o­ries of actu­al­ly being in the envi­ron­ment and know­ing that there is so much more to the expe­ri­ence. The audi­ence part does­n’t show up that well on the videos either, there is so much more interaction.

I think part of the issue, when we talk about tak­ing our videos offline, is that we know that the Inter­net pre­sen­ta­tion does not do jus­tice to what hap­pens in the live per­for­mances. When we put the videos online, it makes it look like those videos are the end goal. We feel that we might be giv­ing the impres­sion that we are try­ing to cre­ate Inter­net webisodes. But these are sec­ondary. Real­ly it is the oth­er way around, the videos are secondary.

HR: Would the live shows hap­pen in the same way with­out the videotaping?

MR: Well I def­i­nite­ly think that film­ing the show affects the way that the crowd par­tic­i­pates. The cam­eras are a ref­er­ence point that most peo­ple have; they make the audi­ence ready to per­form. I think that film­ing can affect the show in a real­ly good way; it pro­motes participation.

EZ: Well we’ve also talked about not record­ing them at all, but going through the motions of record­ing it. Although, I’m not sure that we could bring our­selves to do that.

MR: I think we could, maybe for one show. I would still like to see all the ways we could do the show. Like all the ways we could do it as a fake TV show and then a real TV show.

JW: PBS is a huge goal for us and I think that’s what we are going to try next. It opens Whoop Dee Doo up to such a huge audi­ence. And maybe it is not an art audi­ence we are cater­ing to, because real­ly it is always gal­leries and muse­ums that sup­port us. But PBS opens it up to the every­day fam­i­ly; this would be a dream to us.

HR: PBS is huge.

JW: Yeah, well it would be local. Our local PBS has asked us to present a pilot to them and then if they did air it, you can send it out to oth­er PBS’s and then the hope is that the nation­al PBS would air it. That would be a Nation­al broad­cast, and that would be amaz­ing! That’s a huge goal.

HR: If Whoop Dee Doo broad­cast on tele­vi­sion, would you con­sid­er it a kids’ show? And if so, are there any kids’ tele­vi­sion shows that you would con­sid­er influ­en­tial for this kind of programming?

JW: I don’t think that we think about Whoop Dee Doo as an actu­al kids’ show. On PBS there is a dif­fer­ence, kids’ pro­gram­ming is very much ABC and 123, which is not what we are. There are very spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria for kids’ pro­gram­ming. I think that in the ways that they cat­e­go­rize shows, Whoop Dee Doo would be more like arts and cul­ture pro­gram­ming, because it is not edu­ca­tion­al in that kids’ pro­gram­ming way, it is for adults and kids.

MR: Yeah it is not edu­ca­tion­al in that way, but I do think about Whoop Dee Doo as a kids’ show. As a young child, I watched a lot of shows that weren’t for my age, because they were visu­al­ly inter­est­ing. I was a big fan of SCTV and The Marx Broth­ers. I think about those two shows a lot. And those would­n’t be con­sid­ered chil­dren’s pro­gram­ming, but I don’t think peo­ple would look at them and say that they are adult pro­gram­ming, either. I don’t think that we would ever qual­i­fy as edu­ca­tion­al pro­gram­ming. But I think that Whoop Dee Doo is total­ly appro­pri­ate for kids, and I think that it is just as impor­tant to have this sort of unleashed weird pres­ence as some­thing for kids to watch, I think that these things are good for kids to see. For our own pur­pos­es we could call our­selves a kids’ show, but for PBS, they have a cer­tain num­ber of hours for kids’ pro­gram­ming, and cer­tain hours for arts and cul­ture programming.

JW: Yeah, kids’ pro­gram­ming is all Dora the Explor­er, it’s pret­ty much all cartoons.

The ways in which cer­tain things are deemed to be “edu­ca­tion­al” and oth­er things are not con­sid­ered “edu­ca­tion­al” is inter­est­ing. Some of the Whoop Dee Doo encoun­ters that you guys are describ­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the scenes of momen­tar­i­ly con­fu­sion at the live shows, I feel like that these kinds of things are the basis of edu­ca­tion in some ways.

HR: The ways in which cer­tain things are deemed to be “edu­ca­tion­al” and oth­er things are not con­sid­ered “edu­ca­tion­al” is inter­est­ing. Some of the Whoop Dee Doo encoun­ters that you guys are describ­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the scenes of momen­tar­i­ly con­fu­sion at the live shows, I feel like that these kinds of things are the basis of edu­ca­tion in some ways. The times when you become con­fused and dis­ori­ent­ed and then you have to think or explore a lit­tle bit more. Which is not the same thing as, “Now we are going to learn the ABCs.”

MR: Yeah, I think that is com­plete­ly true. But it makes total sense if you’re pub­licly fund­ed and you are going to call some­thing kids’ pro­gram­ming that there would be cer­tain perime­ters that you would have to set. Blues Clues is a show designed to help kids retain infor­ma­tion, and it is per­fect­ly set up to do that. So, if you are going to choose one kids show, why not choose one that has real­ly easy to prove results, rather than some­thing we would do? It makes total sense to me why we would­n’t be able to be con­sid­ered “edu­ca­tion­al” in that way.

HR: Right, Whoop Dee Doo doesn’t have that kind of struc­ture at all. But it does present a wide array of per­form­ers and per­haps encour­ages a kind of enthu­si­asm and curios­i­ty. Speak­ing of the vari­ety of the vari­ety show, what is the wildest com­bi­na­tion of per­form­ers that you have had on the show?

EZ: We had the Bal­ti­more Police Hon­our Guard walk into our set and they had their rifles, which we argued about, whether or not they should have those…

JW: Dis­cussed, not argued.

EZ: Yeah, dis­cussed. They usu­al­ly car­ry flags and they did a flag presentation.

JW: The tech­ni­cal name for it is a pre­sen­ta­tion of the colours of the flags. So they agreed to present Whoop Dee Doo’s colours.

EZ: They agreed to use these flags that we had all made, but to top it all off they agreed to walk in to the Star Span­gled Ban­ner that Matt had cre­at­ed in a MIDI version.

EZ: But any­way it is like the weird­est ver­sion of the nation­al anthem and they are car­ry­ing these weird flags and it is very much a con­fus­ing moment for the begin­ning of the show, and I thought it was just perfect.

JW: It was amaz­ing, because it was total­ly extend­ed. I thought that it would have last­ed 45 sec­onds but it stretched to 3 min­utes, so it was this total­ly elon­gat­ed dis­tort­ed version.

MR: The Bal­ti­more Police Hon­our Guard are not usu­al­ly con­sid­ered per­form­ers but they do have a very per­for­ma­tive aspect to what they do. Find­ing peo­ple who aren’t usu­al­ly per­form­ers and bring­ing them on the show is real­ly hard.

HR: Are you ever curi­ous about after the show, about con­ver­sa­tions between par­ents and kids? Do you ever hear about the kinds of con­ver­sa­tions that your audi­ence has after the show?

JW: I feel like it has always been a goal, but there is also a rea­son we are not doing it, or maybe it’s because we don’t have time, but I don’t know. We’ve always talked about it, like some­one giv­ing feed­back but it is always hid­den, but we have a tons of friends who are four­teen so we could total­ly get them to be incognito.

HR: Do you have reg­u­lar kids in Kansas City who are involved with Whoop Dee Doo? Or are you always work­ing with dif­fer­ent groups of kids, depend­ing on where you travel?

JW: When we had our space, we had kids who were reg­u­lar with Oper­a­tion Break­through. After we did Caldera I think we dis­cov­ered that high school was where it was at for us. We had nev­er worked with high school age kids, and it was a match made in heav­en. I think we’ve only done high school age since then and in Mia­mi, we have some high school age kids lined up.

The orga­ni­za­tion we are work­ing with is a real­ly impor­tant orga­ni­za­tion for low income fam­i­lies in Kansas City, but it was just too much for us, in what we were try­ing to accom­plish in terms of how many kids they would have to give us. There were times where we were lit­er­al­ly giv­en 48 kids at once; it was more like babysit­ting at times. And there was not the fund­ing at times; we did­n’t have the fund­ing here or from an orga­ni­za­tion to have a small group where you can real­ly make an impact.

HR: How do the col­lab­o­ra­tions between the kids and the oth­er per­form­ers get worked out? It sounds like at Caldera you had the Caldera youth and The Nation­al Guard just sit down in a room togeth­er and brain­storm a skit. Is that gen­er­al­ly how it works?

JW: I think that is gen­er­al­ly ide­al­ly how it works. It’s such a dif­fi­cult thing to make hap­pen because there are so many vari­ables. We nev­er have fund­ing to give peo­ple for their time, and I think hav­ing lit­tle ges­tures with fund­ing would make such a huge dif­fer­ence. It is some­thing that we are striv­ing for. We are deal­ing with peo­ple who are not used to per­form­ing, so some­times it takes a lot of con­vinc­ing, and it takes a lot of time to build trust and espe­cial­ly not just for peo­ple to be on the show but to col­lab­o­rate. It’s a dif­fi­cult process, but it is total­ly worth it.

HR: Thanks so much for tak­ing the time to talk with me, Jaimie, Matt and Erin!

 

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HELEN REED works with spe­cif­ic groups of peo­ple such as Twin Peaks fans, les­bian sep­a­ratists, and high school art teacher can­di­dates. In each project, col­lab­o­ra­tion is a work­ing process from which the art­work emerges. Reed favors col­lab­o­ra­tors that reflect her inter­est in par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture, affin­i­ty groups, and fan­ta­sy-based sub­cul­tures. Her projects take ver­nac­u­lar form such as tele­vi­sion shows, pub­li­ca­tions, post­cards and oth­er forms of eas­i­ly trans­mit­table and dis­persed media, so as to cir­cu­late back into the com­mu­ni­ties from which they are generated.

Reed has exhib­it­ed work at Pre­fix Insti­tute for Con­tem­po­rary Art (Toron­to), apexart (New York), Smack Mel­lon (New York), Port­land Art Muse­um, Seat­tle Art Muse­um and La Cen­trale Galerie Pow­er­house (Mon­tréal). She holds a BFA from the Emi­ly Carr Uni­ver­si­ty of Art and Design (Van­cou­ver), an MFA in Art and Social Prac­tice from Port­land State University.

WHOOP DEE DOO is a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion that works close­ly with under­served youth, ado­les­cents and adults through work­shops, com­mu­ni­ty col­lab­o­ra­tions and live vari­ety shows. Through our pro­gram­ming, Whoop Dee Doo strives to not only break down stereo­types and bar­ri­ers between age, gen­der, cul­ture and sub-cul­ture, but to form and fos­ter unique col­lab­o­ra­tions between unlike­ly pair­ings of com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers that ulti­mate­ly blos­som into excep­tion­al and mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions. Through our work­shops, Whoop Dee Doo cre­ates a whole­some envi­ron­ment for cre­ative expres­sion out­side the bound­aries of a class­room or muse­um, teach­ing chil­dren that art is a safe and appro­pri­ate out­let for feel­ings that may be dif­fi­cult to artic­u­late. Through our com­mu­ni­ty pro­gram­ming, Whoop Dee Doo col­lab­o­rates with per­form­ers and artists of all back­grounds and spe­cial­ties- from sci­ence teach­ers and Celtic bag­pipers to tra­di­tion­al clog­ging troupes, West African dance teams, Tibetan throat singers, body­builders, bar­ber­shop quar­tets, and Chi­cano punk bands. This chaot­ic mix cre­ates an unex­pect­ed and endear­ing expe­ri­ence, and invites a cross-gen­er­a­tional and cross-cul­tur­al dialogue.