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Monty Cantsin


Cantsin had sent several armsful of ideological baggage ahead of him: He is said to be the leader of the "neoist" movement, which defies definition but whose parents seem to be the usual ones - Dada and MOMA. His notoriety is based largely on his former on-stage practice of having a nurse draw two vials of his blood, which he then would take back into one or another of his orifices, or sell to someone in the audience.

That sort of performance is now more paleoist than neoist, having been done to *death* - sometimes literally - by shock artists of the '70s. Indeed, anyone hoping for an S&M spectacular on Thursday would have been disappointed. Cantsin has less in common with art shock than he has with another Monty - Python. Cantsin is above all a story-teller, an entertainer, and a very good one.


Mike Greenberg, San Antonio Express News, Dec.21, 1985