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Volume One, Issue 14, Dec. 29, 2006 - Jan. 4, 2007
Cabaret “Amber Alert!”
Amber Martin Former Southern debutante Amber Martin doesn’t aim to please everyone. In the footsteps of famous loudmouthed ladies Performance artist Amber Martin lands in Chelsea with a song and some heart By Will McKinley Amber Martin is comfortable with silence. That’s probably a good thing for a performer who proudly admits to leaving her audience “with question marks over their heads.” After a decade as the alternative toast of the town of Portland, Oregon, Martin has brought her powerful voice and outlandish characters to The Cutting Room for a one-woman cabaret show, provocatively called “Amber Alert!” At a recent Friday night performance, a typically jaded Chelsea audience seemed unsure of whether to laugh, cry or duck under the tables for cover — and Martin had no problem with that. “People are afraid to break the rules,” she said by telephone, during a Christmas visit to her mother’s house in Southeast Texas. “I’ve been safe all my life. I’m tired of being safe.” Martin, a self-described former “Southern debutante” who performed in beauty pageants, like her mom, the former Miss Beaumont, Texas, said she was “taught to be a feminine hostess, to please everyone — and to keep my mouth shut.” In spite of this repression — or because of it, Martin, an only child, began performing at a young age. “I used to close myself in the bathroom and recreate commercials in the mirror,” she reminisced with a laugh. She also addictively consumed popular culture, taking notes from loudmouthed ladies like Carol Burnett, Gilda Radner and Dolly Parton and TV shows such as “American Bandstand,” “Soul Train” and the envelope-pushing sitcoms of Norman Lear. After college in Los Angeles, Martin made her way to the hipster mecca of Portland, where she developed a cartoonish cast of characters who embody her eclectic musical tastes. Currently Martin has 20 of these personas floating around in her psyche, and weaves them into her performances. “Amber Alert!” features five: a dead-on impersonation of Reba McEntire (dressed in Martin’s prom dress); a meth-addicted hustler named Daydra Bottoms, who offers to hump audience members for a quarter; Mama Coco, a funky black DJ; Kuweesha, Martin’s angry, black alter ego who sings “Fight the Power” while doing push-ups; and Brenda Snell, a Whitney Houston-obsessed harpie in a Nevada dive. Each represents Martin’s affection for a particular musical genre. “I’m a record collector,” she admits. “I’ve always wanted to put country, funk, rock, jazzy stuff and blues all together in one show.” Her characters are similarly grotesque, yet completely distinct, from a bleach blond in a spangly tube top to a soul sister in an out-sized Afro. Part of the fun is watching Martin transform from one character to the next, bantering through on-stage costume, wig and make-up changes. “That’s one of the things I enjoy, getting to one extreme from the other without losing the audience,” she said. Martin never lost the occasionally rowdy audience, though she did occasionally confuse them. Her characterizations range from rude to raw, from amusing to antagonizing — much like the title of her provocative, pop culture pastiche of music, dance and comedy. She acknowledges that some people may not be amused by her appropriation of the public notification of a child abduction. “I don’t strive to offend people,” she said. “But you can’t please everyone, so you might as well do what you feel strongly about.”
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