Radiant Child

Written and performed by Jeff Norton, Radiant Child is a an energetic dramatic monologue based on interviews with the late artist Keith Haring, who died from AIDS in 1990. As Haring, Norton stalks a small stage decorated with pop culture artifacts and reminisces about his upbringing in a conservative Republican household in Kutztown, PA, his early attraction to drawing, and his emigration to Greenwich Village as a young adult. Here, Haring would capture the attention of the Big Apple with his legendary subway drawings: simple chalk sketches, like his trademark crawling figure emanating rays of sunshine, one of over 5,000 that he drew between 1981-1984. Alternating between the banal and the thought-provoking, Norton's performance is most interesting when he tackles the subject of the meaning of art in modern society. For Haring, the best art was as much functional as aesthetic (he was awed by African carved wooden figures used in rituals, for example)--at the least, good art exposed hypocrisy in society and promoted discourse between citizens. His disenchantment with the "art world," which seemed to him at far remove from the man and woman on the street, found expression in renegade actions such as opening a "discount" art store--a kind of Woolworth's for original art, where a painting was more likely to fetch 5 bucks than $500,000. Haring was as much a revolutionary child as a radiant one, and his argument for art as a necessary component of society's conversation is defiantly optimistic. Recommended, particularly for public and university libraries with strong art history and criticism collections. (R. Pitman)