poolboy: don’t pick up
By Hayley Labrum Morrison
Friday, March 29, 2024
don’t pick up show posters at the entrance of Museum of Human Achievement.
poolboy (Sam Mayer) performing at the Museum of Human Achievement, March 2024.
momgrab (Julia Mounsey) appears on a video projection at Museum of Human Achievement in March, 2024.
momgrab appears on a monitor and in person at Co-Lab Projects in July, 2022.
AUSTIN, TX —You know that feeling of sweet ecstacy when you discover an addicting reality show that already has three seasons under its belt? It’s a pool of open water to dive into; ripe for the binge. poolboy was in its fourth season in 2022 when I happened upon its zaniness. poolboy00 (Sam Mayer) and his best friend momgrab (Julia Mounsey) responded to prompts from an audience at Co-Lab Projects’ Glissman Culvert as I waded in a nearby collapsible pool. Maybe it was the cool water against my skin on a sweltering Texas night, or the sweaty dancing at Cheer-up Charlies afterward, but poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN struck a chord with me that night.
The fifth installment in the poolboy saga, poolboy: don’t pick up—an “immersive party and performance”—unfolded at the Museum of Human Achievement (MoHA) in Austin Thursday March 21 - Saturday March 23. I was filled with excitement–and a little trepidation–as I climbed the wooden steps to enter the warehouse-like structure that is MoHA on the last night of the season. What had happened in the world of poolboy and momgrab since I had seen them last? What antics would they embark upon that night and how would they involve the audience?
The first thing that jumped out at me was a giant projection of a monologuing momgrab. With a sunny mustard-colored bedroom and an unmade single bed behind her, momgrab shared that she wouldn’t be at poolboy: don’t pick up because something had come up. In fact, something had taken over her life. Entering a rehabilitation facility was her only next move. She said “It’s the type of realness that I think poolboy tries to achieve, but often fails to do because, you know, I think I’ve known poolboy a long time. Really long time. I know him pretty well, and he attempts vulnerability, but I think instead of actually achieving it, he wears it as a kind of mask. You know, like the confessions and like, “oh, I’m naked. It’s like the disguise of vulnerability, but it’s performative.” Her words seemed to sting with criticism, but also aptly portrayed the painful depths of a drug addiction. Why else would she speak of her best friend this way? I was hooked.
Audience members experience vignettes behind a church pew.
A viewer takes in momgrab’s message.
momgrab’s words echoed as I entered the first of three vignettes shrouded in white cloth hanging from the ceiling. A small plastic packet suspended by a fishing line swung wildly back and forth preventing my eyes from getting a lock on it. I had assumed it was cocaine, but crescent moon shapes of disembodied fingernail clippings revealed themselves as the packet steadied in my fingers. Disgust and curiosity swept over me as I quickly continued to the next vignette. I was met with an open book atop a narrow podium. A flashlight spread the pages agape and marked a chapter titled “The glass confessional: the theatre in hyper-democratic society” and began:
One of the many deceits that lie at the heart of theatre practice, and one to which it is specially susceptible, given its artistic form, is authorial invisibility. Whilst we who make texts expect to claim the credit for the achievement of a dramatic presentation, and equally expect to suffer the often violent repudiation of ourselves that attends on public scrutiny of this production, we are peculiarly absent at the moment of performance in a way which is untypical of other art forms.
The marked page was puzzling and left me pondering the role of the “author” in poolboy: don’t pick up.
The third vignette was just as cryptic as the first. A Ziploc “POWER SHIELD” bag halfway full of powder-coated Nacho Cheese Doritos dangled from a fishing line. More questions arose: To whom did these Doritos belong? Why were they not eaten? Is someone walking around with orange dust-coated fingers? The Doritos felt as equally belonged to and discarded as the fingernails.
Vignette 1: Fingernails
Vignette 2: Open book
Vignette 3: Doritos
I moved beyond momgrab’s imposing projected presence to find a wall of notecards hanging from wire in three rows. Instructions read: “1. Write a conversation prompt or task for poolboy to complete. 2. Clip it to a wire. 3. Take a notecard to the car.” On closer inspection, the notecards were filled with handwritten prompts from the audience (I realized later that some were written by poolboy) like “SHOTGUN A BEER”, “EAT A CRANE FLY”, and “MOON THE AUDIENCE''. “The car” in the instructions referred to the literal car parked in the building. Audience members would climb in the backseat, pick up a microphone, and gaze into a camera before reciting the contents of their notecard to poolboy. poolboy would subsequently perform the task from within a white tent and periodically bang his head on the table while a crowded audience watched or didn’t at all.
An audience member fills out a notecard prompt.
Notecard prompts were suspended in three rows.
An audience member hangs their notecard.
I had seen this process before at poolboy: I WANT TO LISTEN, from the wire-hung notecards to the sometimes silly audience prompts. I had seen poolboy take off his shirt and shotgun a Lone Star before. I had heard poolboy’s soft singing into the microphone before. I had even seen poolboy run around the Glissman culvert and dive into the collapsible pool I was floating in. But something was different this time. Well, a few things were different this time. momgrab wasn’t here. And her physical absence was palpable in poolboy’s every movement. It may not have been detectable to the average onlooker only there to drink a beer and watch something weird, but I observed poolboy carefully and noted that he wasn’t the same without her by his side. The confidence, the playfulness, the warmness I had seen from him before was exchanged for uncertainty, grief, and disconnectedness. He moved through the motions of his assigned tasks, but the joy in doing them alone paled in comparison to doing them alongside momgrab.
The audience mingles while poolboy answers a prompt.
Audience members watch as poolboy crawls around his tent.
At the end of the evening, poolboy left his tent and entered the car. He opened a folded piece of paper and read its contents:
“So it’s August, and I’m alone in my hot apartment streaming with momgrab. We’re trying to make each other cry. We trade off week after week, pushing each other in increasingly intense measures. Why did we do this. It’s easy for her, she can make herself cry just by putting a song on. I cannot do that.”
poolboy went on to recount trying to write the show, but momgrab had ghosted him. He waited anxiously for a call, a call that he was sure would inform him of her passing. He says “I don’t want to pick up. Because if I pick up, it will be real.” But he does pick up, and momgrab is alive and in rehab. He goes on, his words now directed to momgrab: “Everything real, truly real, about myself is revealed in you…You are the greatest relationship in my life, creative or otherwise, even if I know I’m not yours.”
Poolboy’s emphasis on the word “real” rang in my ears. On queue, poolboy’s phone rang from within the car. He held it up to the camera: “momgrab” read across the screen. My heart jumped, “Is it really her?”, “Is she calling from rehab?”, “Will poolboy PICK UP?!” But of course he picked up, because the show would be over if he didn’t.
momgrab: You sound a little overwhelmed.
poolboy: Yeah, it was a lot tonight.
momgrab: I can tell cause when you’re overwhelmed you get a little flat. Your voice gets a little flat.
poolboy: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.
momgrab: But you’re all done.
poolboy: Yeah, I’m all done. How’s it going over there? How’s rehab?
momgrab: Rehab’s great. Um, we all cleaned the kitchen today. Yeah, and talk about too many cooks in the kitchen. There were like fifteen people trying to do five jobs.
poolboy: Nice.
momgrab: So, final thoughts.
poolboy: Yeah, it’s crazy, when this show was happening the past few days I thought all I wanted was for it to be over, and now that it’s ending I just think like I feel like part of you is going away. I have talked to you so much this past week and now I feel like when the show is over I feel like I’m losing you again. [sounds choked up]
momgrab: This week was the first time you ever cried to me on the phone
poolboy: Yeah, that was crazy
momgrab: Yeah, that was intense, but good
poolboy: It feels like I’m rung out, like a rag
momgrab: Yeah, I can hear it
poolboy: I just um, yeah, I want to see you soon
momgrab: Well I have good news, which is that you are going to.
[both inhale and exhale slowly]
Momgrab: Miss you
poolboy: I miss you too
poolboy sings to the audience.
poolboy puts his shirt back on.
The audience listens as poolboy pours his heart out.
poolboy reads into a microphone in the car.
poolboy speaks to momgrab over the phone from inside the car.
“momgrab” appears on pooplboy’s phone as she calls him.
The audience was quiet for the first time all evening. Perhaps they were paying their respects for the sacredness of human emotion or perhaps they were trying to detect what was scripted versus non-scripted, or real emotion versus acting–differentiations that continue to be important to the human intellect in a digital age. It was at that moment that it occurred to me that it was quite probable that the entirety of what felt like a freefrom experience was actually manufactured: momgrab’s confession; more than a few of the notecards; momgrab’s phone call. There was an invisible author hiding in plain sight the entire time, or at least in a white tent reminiscent of the curtain that hid the actual Wizard of Oz.
Though inspired by reality TV, experiencing poolboy differs from guiltily delighting in the sexiness of Too Hot to Handle and the glamourousness of Real Housewives through the barrier of a glowing screen. poolboy does, however, similarly contemplate on human curiosities and frailties and craftilly balance scripted and non-scripted interactions to guide an oblivious audience to a predetermined end. By extension, poolboy begs the question: as more and more of each of our curated western lives appear on the internet for others to observe, judge, applaud, and ridicule, are we not all on the same spectrum of real, unreal, and surreal? Or is grace only reserved for those that appear to be “real” or unpaid for their biographical content? Perhaps we will find out in the next installment of poolboy.
poolboy: don't pick up
By Sam Mayer
Installation by Anderson Funk
Additional material by Julia Mounsey
Sound by Bryan Dalle Molle
Produced by Christine Gwillim
With help from Jay Roff-Garcia, Leah Yacknin-Dawson
Graphics by Andy Gottschalk