"You have to be willing to take chances. The arts are not a profession; they're a calling." - Heather Woodbury, performance artist

Those rare times, when performance artist Heather Woodbury stops in Chicago, audiences feel like they've embarked on a cosmic trek from the dawn to twilight of modern civilization. After all, she usually drags along about 100 Dickensian-like characters, whom she seems to have stowed away in the vast compartments of her fertile brain. Woodbury, a San Francisco Bay Area native, first brought her 10-hour, one-woman epic, What Ever: An American Odyssey in Eight Acts, to Chicago's Steppenwolf Studio Theatre in 1998. It extended over four nights, and she played every character.

Woodbury returned to Steppenwolf for an abbreviated holiday-themed performance of What Ever in 2000. Audiences were so hungry to witness this unobtrusive chameleon transform herself into 100 different people'using only her voice, two chairs and a microphone'they braved a fierce blizzard. Her one-night-only show was sold-out.

Spanning 20th century topics as diverse as Kurt Cobain's death, both world wars and rave culture, Woodbury is considered a cult hero among younger generations and an epic storyteller among older ones. Her coast-to-coast 'performance novel,' set in 1994, travels from Seattle and California to New York City and into the stratosphere. Her gallery of personalities include: rave kids Skeeter, Sable and Clove (who is haunted by Kurt Cobain's ghost); Bushie, a crack-addled Hell's Kitchen hooker waging war against Manhattan's West 45th Street condo owners; and (my personal favorite) Violet Smith, a droll, octogenarian, pro-choice activist, who'accompanied by her poodle Balzac'trades eviscerating bon mot's at New York's Blue Ship Diner.

This past September, Woodbury's What Ever became an actual sit-down novel when it was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux under the title What Ever: A Living Novel. It's essentially her original odyssey written down, with each scene serving as its own chapter, and the addition of 'thumb nail sketches of the environment.' She touts, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, its new 'easy-to-carry form.'

As part of her 'Rave On' book tour, the writer-performer will make a stop in Chicago. Scott Dray Productions, LLC is presenting Woodbury in an encore of What Ever, followed by a Q&A and book signing at 7:30 p.m., Nov. 12, at Theatre Building Chicago. A book signing is also scheduled for Nov. 9 at Women and Children First in Andersonville.

Long-distance from her Los Angeles home, Woodbury explains that the idea to publish her living novel was born in Chicago. Her now-agent saw her performance at Steppenwolf and, she recalls, 'he nagged at me to write it down.' She notes that a lot of people thought she improvised the whole show when, in fact, it was wholly scripted'all 10 hours of it! It took her five years to get it published. Now, after a reading in LA with professional actors like Ann Magnuson and John C. Reilly, Woodbury announces'snickering at the Hollywood parlance'that 'a movie is in the works; it's being optioned by my director. And you know what that means. It can take up to 25 years to get made.'

Not one to mince her words or to get clouded by fame, Woodbury is most committed to honest and imaginative performance art. She created What Ever as a serial performance in the back of an East Village acoustic punk club in the mid-1990s'encouraged by her friend and director Dudley Saunders. Every Wednesday night, for nine months, she presented a brand-new themed installment. Saunders helped her shape them into a massive road show, which has toured the globe. What Ever also has been broadcast on National Public Radio.

Woodbury's expansive storytelling in What Ever cuts across the terrain of New Age spaciness, corporate greed, self-interested environmentalists and the overall dangers of Americans' eroding free speech. She tackles every 'ism' from every angle, and makes some witty and profound statements in the process'never sounding preachy. She also clamps shut the mythical generation gap in the following exchange between the irrepressible Violet and her confidante Iris:

Iris: 'I was reading that there were these midnight dance parties that the young people'' Violet: The young people? The young people? Which young people do you mean? I should imagine there are several sub-divisions at this point.'

That liberating sense of linking generations gives What Ever a timelessness despite its ties to a specific era. Has Woodbury considered updating the piece or writing a sequel?

'They are of their time,' responds Woodbury, 39, of her characters. 'The more time that passes, the more impossible it is to update. The early '90s have become history. People of Violet's generation are mostly dead, and the New York she remembers is dead and gone. Even the teenagers would be in their mid-20s now. I think teenagers today are into different things. They're into raves'but raves as retro. Raves, once considered alternative, are part of mass culture. Even What Ever is almost an old hat name.'

Woodbury, who grew up in Berkeley, Calif., has always been drawn to writing and acting'but not the academic aspects of either form. Rather than go to college, she left home at 17 and moved to New York's East Village to perform solo shows. She was shaped by Manhattan's 1980s performance-art scene and held a variety of colorful jobs'from exotic dancer to bartender and waitress. She criss-crossed the country many times by car, train, bus 'and thumb''trips that inspired What Ever.

In 2001, Woodbury received an award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, as well as an NEA Fellowship for her new novel, 'Tale of 2 Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks' (scheduled for completion in 2005). Also in 2001, she moved back to the West Coast, where she lives with her visual-artist husband Roberto Palazzo.

She has always been interested in how the past and future intersect and the notion of 'irrepressible loss.' Woodbury acknowledges, 'The bohemian New York that I came of age in feels quite eradicated to me.' At the same time, she believes 'nostalgia is an illness' and prefers to focus on 'how do we go forward.' In What Ever, she struck a balance through her character of Violet, who represents the past; and the rave teens, who are the future. Growing up in California made her acutely aware of what it's like to live in a planned, modern community without the strong sense of history of, say, New York. 'The rest of the world is becoming like LA,' she states. 'But LA was LA 50 years ago. New York today is like LA in the '80s.'

Her next epic novel'which is a written book, not a performance'centers on two neighborhoods: Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles and Ebbet's Field in New York. Both were bulldozed in the 1950s and replaced with 'instant communities' for the sake of urban redevelopment. 'These communities marked the beginning of the globalization of identity,' says the author, 'the replacement of a real sense of community with corporate community. 'Tale of 2 Cities' cork-screws out from an historical vantage point. We live in a time when we're haunted by our future as much as by our past.'

'Tale of 2 Cities' filters LA and Brooklyn'beginning in the 1950s'through contemporary characters. But one is a ghost; another is in a coma. Linking these stories is a young 'damaged' deejay.

'The deejay,' explains Woodbury, 'prompts the question, 'What can an artist and a young person do?' What does he do with broken bits of music'and put them together in a new tapestry of sound? What do we do with our shattered places?'

Her research carried her deep into the field of urban planning. She discovered a central dilemma: A famed urban planner, like Robert Moses, destroyed tons of neighborhoods, but he gave us New York City as we know it today. He created freeways and parkways'elements that ultimately re-directed patterns of human behavior and lifestyles (not in an entirely positive way). Woodbury is examining 'how these massive engineering feats reverberate on either coast.'

'Tale of 2 Cities' is the natural next step in the writer's 'fascination with huge, ridiculously ambitious stories that are trying to understand America and American history.'

Along with the growing homogenization of communities, Woodbury has observed that the arts, in general, 'have been professionalized' and must fit into a 'corporate mold.'

'By the time they're 10,' says Woodbury, 'people are packaging themselves.'

She believes that's tied to overall trends in low risk-taking. It's more about going to the right schools, applying for the right grant or writing the best conceptual essay. Artists, she adds, have to be proven to be marketable. Therefore, the rawness and opportunity for trial and error so crucial to artists' development have been discouraged.

'You have to be willing to take chances,' Woodbury contends. 'The arts are not a profession; they're a calling.'

She finds that talent is not lacking, but the imagination is''because artists are not receiving any kind of nurturing.'

That's why she plans to open her own performance café, which will mirror the more collaborative and grungy atmosphere of New York's 1980s perf-art scene. Woodbury is a champion of artists reclaiming a 'grass-roots' approach and creating their own outlets and opportunities. 'People need to empower themselves,' she continues. 'They shouldn't expect others to do it for them.'

But she remains optimistic, pointing out that, for instance, Starbucks may have sparked an unexpected shift in neighborhood development: When these types of chains become the norm, she's noticed, people eventually long for real coffee shops with character. So they start springing up alongside the Starbucks.

The publication of What Ever, she hopes, will provide actors with a fresh source of monologues. She also would like to see it produced as a full-length play: 'What Ever gains something without me doing all the characters,' Woodbury concedes.

She offered further suggestions for actors taking on rapid-fire multiple roles: 'It's like singing in different keys,' Woodbury explains. 'It's important to think of it as music. More actors are capable of fugueing than they think they are.'

In order to prepare for performances of What Ever, she trained with a vocal coach and religiously does vocal warm-ups. Physically, she keeps her body in shape and practices yoga.

Before a performance, Woodbury goes 'through a death-state. I empty out. I have to give over and let the characters come out of me.'

Ultimately, through her art, she aims to appeal to everyone on a human level; to pay homage to the past, yet look at the future with cautious optimism. Art is her personal nourishment.

'Art is not a luxury,' Woodbury insists. 'It's food. You can't have a living culture without it, and we need it more than ever now in America.'

For more information on What Ever at Theatre Building Chicago, call 773/327-5252.

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