"What It's 4" was part of Baby No More Times, a theatrical concert that describes itself as "a feminist fistfight between the power of pop music and all its weird messages about body image, gender roles, & all that."
The song describes the perplexing nature of the male anatomy. To underscore the theme, my co-designer Kelly and I chose to use archival images taken from real sex-education videos used in mid 20th-century classrooms across the Unites States. Because of the bright, cheerful nature of the song, these images were combined with explosions of geometric patterns, whose colours were taken from album covers of once-popular pop groups such as Aqua.
Performed on Dec 17th, 2014, at The Knitting Factory, Brooklyn, New York.
Projections for "What It's 4" by Sharang Biswas and Kelly Saxton, with help from Andrew Lazarow.
Written by Mary Birnbaum, Melissa Lusk and Caroline V. McGraw.
With original music by Melissa Lusk.
Directed by Mary Birnbaum and featuring Talisa Friedman, Lauren Lim Jackson, Melissa Lusk and Diana Oh