by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Oh, that crazy Henry K. National Security Advisor, 1969-1973. U.S. Secretary of State, 1973-1977. Principal investigator of the 9/11 attacks, 2002 (until he had to step down, due to intense criticism from Democrats). Principal architect of U.S.-Soviet détente, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the normalization of relations with China. One-time squeeze of Candice Bergen and Shirley MacLaine. Winner of the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, etc.

It's an impressive résumé, to be sure. But if you add in troubling details like, say, complicity in mass murder (Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, East Timor), it gets a little more complicated. Jerry Snell, a Montreal- and Taiwan-based artist, wants the world to know more about the dark side of Henry. His new multi-media performance piece, The Passion of Henry, is an attempt, he says, "to get inside Kissinger's brain" and hold to account the crimes committed by the master of realpolitik. Using minimal dialogue, video montage, archival footage and live music, Snell promises the show will "not be a passive experience for the audience."

Life, death and sex

The idea of skewering Kissinger had been in Snell's mind for almost three years, he says, but it was only last Boxing Day that he got the final push to motivate him into turning the idea into reality.

"I was looking at the footage of the tsunami on Chinese television and I was asking myself, ‘Did a bomb just go off? What the fuck is this?'" he says. "And then when people started criticizing the U.S. for not reacting fast enough, the Americans got this PR machine up front, and it became all [the then-U.S. Secretary of State and Vietnam combat vet] Colin Powell touring Asia. And what does Colin Powell know about Asia except how to destroy it?"

Snell believes that Kissinger was the ultimate downer for the generation that came of age in the late '60s (Snell won't reveal his age, except to say that he was a part of it). "Everyone thinks of LSD, the hippies and Hendrix, that it was this real groovy time" he says. "But the refugees, from Vietnam, from Chile, they're all forgotten." That's why Snell went out of his way to recruit performers for his show from countries that were casualties of American foreign policy, like Vietnamese videographer Thien Vu Dang and musicians from Chile.

As for the hour-long show itself, Belgian actor Pascal Dabe, who'll play Kissinger, says, "It will be a metaphor for being inside Kissinger's brain. We'll meet all the politicians behind the genocides of the 20th century, as well as the Ambassador of Death. We'll also be exploring Kissinger's sex life, in a surreal kind of way." This apparently will involve a nun - who symbolizes the rape and murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of clergy in El Salvador.

Fleshing out the numbers

What was perhaps most challenging, Snell says, was avoiding the temptation to list the death toll and crimes linked to Kissinger in a dry, passionless manner. "We didn't want to be didactic," he says. "We wanted to filter all these statistics and numbers into another form, to transform and humanize them."

Another challenge was avoiding getting bogged down in the gloom of the topic. "How do you deal with all this hatred and turn it around? How do you make a mass murderer funny?" he asks. "Why aren't there more groups like Monty Python, who can take political satire and hammer it home?" (The Pythons, by the way, did write "The Henry Kissinger Song": "Henry Kissinger/How I'm missing yer/You're the Doctor of my dreams/With your crinkly hair and your glassy stare/And your Machiavellian schemes.")

Nevertheless, Dabe points out that Kissinger is already effectively barred from parts of Europe, as several human rights judges have requested he answer questions regarding his past actions. "Some people ask, ‘Why bother?'" says Snell. "But if you ask someone from Vietnam, Cambodia or Chile, they'll say, ‘It's about time.'"

The Passion of Henry performs on April 28 and April 30 at the SAT (1195 St-Laurent), 8 p.m. Tickets are $15 at the door