Shelly Mars (born 1960, Celina, Ohio) is a performance artist, actor and

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...

based in New York. She studied at University of California, Santa Cruz and has a B.F.A. in theater from the California Institute of the Arts. She also studied at

American Conservatory Theater The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school. History The Ameri ...

(ACT) in San Francisco.

Career

Since starting performing in San Francisco in the early 1980s, Mars has done everything from improvisational stage work to voiceovers to movies and is best known for her monologues and gender-bending portrayals of various subcultures, with a focus on queer culture.

Film and TV appearances

Her first film role was in Monika Treut's ''Die Jungfrauenmaschine'' (aka ''Virgin Machine''), a groundbreaking film about the hedonistic exploration of sexuality. Mars went on to appear in many more films, including ''Drop Dead Rock'' with

Debbie Harry Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble; July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981. Born in ...

and Adam Ant, Jennie Livingston's ''Who's the Top?'', ''Venus Boyz'', Mary Harron's ''The Notorious Bettie Page'' and a documentary based on her own life, ''The Dark Matter of Mars''. After Virgin Machine's release in 1988, Mars was at the forefront of the emerging drag king culture in the US and appeared on such television shows as '' The Kids in the Hall'', '' The Phil Donahue Show'', ''The Montel Williams Show'' and ''The Sally Jesse Raphael Show'' and on

HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American premium television network, which is the flagship property of namesake parent subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is ba ...

's ''Real Sex'' and ''Drag Kings''. More recently, she has been featured in Comedy Central's ''Out There in Hollywood'', A&E's ''Role Reversal'' and ''The Jamie Kennedy Experience'' on The WB.

Live performances

Her solo shows include Bug Chasers (2005), Whiplash: Tales of a Tomboy (1999), which the New York Times called her "a female Candide", and Invasion from Mars (1997) working in venues across New York and beyond: Abrons Art Center, PS 122, New York Theatre Workshop, The Kitchen and the

Grove Street Playhouse The Grove Street Playhouse, also known during its existence as the Courtyard Playhouse, was an off-Broadway theatre located on Grove Street in the West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenw ...

. She performed in the Night of 100 Stars to raise money for the first New York International Fringe Festival (1997)."New York to Move Beyond the Fringe, Aug. 13-24," Playbill, Feb. 24, 1997, retrieved 22 September 2011
Mars' autobiographical show, Sex on Mars, enjoyed a five-month run in Provincetown, MA in 2000. Her Homo Bonobo Project show, which is ongoing, weaves themes of sexuality, love, and violence into an educational piece about the bonobos of the Congo. Recently, Mars has been Artist in Residence at NYC's Museum of Sex and has received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts (2010), the Arcus Foundation, the Gill Foundation, and the Franklin Furnace Fund for Performance Art. She is currently hosting a performance series at Dixon Place called Bulldyke Chronicles that she co-hosts with Kirby the Bulldog. She has taught others the how-tos of performance art and creating one's own monologue; her own monologues have been published in Creating Your Own Monologue.

Printmaking

Mars has recently started doing printmaking and textile work with paper, metal and tee shirts in a style that reflects the intensity, sexuality and darkly layered aspects of her performance art.

References

External links

Official websiteShelly Mars on the Homo Bonobo Project websiteShelly Mars on YouTube
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mars, Shelly American film actresses American stage actresses American television actresses American lesbian actresses Living people 1960 births University of California, Santa Cruz alumni People from Celina, Ohio 21st-century American women