Comments (0) As you may be able to see on the righthand side of this page, I’ve launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for Storms Beneath Her Skin.
I hope you’ll be able to chip in, even if it’s just a few dollars. Thanks!
I’m gearing up for Storms Beneath Her Skin promo material for my summer tour. I was planning to do a generic “my photo with info about the performance” poster and postcard, but am playing with the idea of doing a stylized ‘to-do’ list, with some things checked off. As a general idea:
[X] – Pick up groceries
[X] – Do laundry
[X] – Get gas for car
[X] – Go to the gym
[ ] – Turn my penis into a vagina
With the last entry circled and underlined. I’m imagining the show title at the top and then ticket date/times/locations at the bottom. I like it, but also don’t want people to think it’s only about surgery.
Any thoughts?
As I continue to brainstorm for the show I’ll be touring this summer, it has been helpful to also think about past productions. Specifically, what was their through-line? What arc(s) did the show contain? For Uncovering the Mirrors, the primary question was “How do ceremony and ritual help shape identity?” For No Gender Left Behind, “How do we teach gender and identity?” Obviously, each show explored topics beyond those specific questions, but – particularly looking back at those scripts – that’s where the bulk of my energy was going.
I’ve been trying to use this realization – I hadn’t really thought about my shows in that way before – I’ve been considering what I want to examine in this show: How do we embody and physicalize gender and identity?
I’m hoping this line of inquiry will help me write more (and write more productively towards performance) as I’ve felt a bit blocked. Not that I don’t have any ideas, but that they’re so shifting and ephemeral it’s hard to pin anything down. Like things are coming in and out of focus, but no unifying picture is (yet) emerging.
This past weekend, I saw a show at a theatre I’ve worked with in the past. The show was, for the most part, really fantastic. Funny, engaging, great set and costume pieces, good sound design, well acted; I have lots of nice things to say about this show. It also had a problematic gendered interaction I’ve been giving a lot of thought. Briefly, there was a main female character and two male characters who were trying to woo her. She was responding to one of them, and clearly rejecting the other. It culminated in a comedic confrontation where she was physically passed back and forth between the two men.
Now, I don’t inherently object to plot lines where a man pursues a woman who isn’t interested. Likewise, this was a show with a lot of clowning, so the physical confrontation was not violent or objectionable in the way it could have been in a more traditional straight play (a term which has nothing to do with sexuality). Likewise, the rejected man was shamed for his overbearing nature, and kicked out of the show as a result of his behavior. The other guy, the good guy, got the girl and all was right with the world.
At the same time, the way the female lead’s rejection of this man – and, more specifically, the way he responded – made me really uncomfortable. For me, it boiled down to frustration that this production used a character’s belief that “No means yes” for comedic value.
Still brainstorming. I’ve posted most of these before, but figured I’d share my thoughts… Here’s the list which eventually resulted in Uncovering the Mirrors.
Any feedback?
This past Friday night, I performed at a bar in Chicago as part of CAKE Chicago. The show contained some new material, and was a really positive experience. I performed for about 20 minutes, prior to two bands and a stand-up comedian. During my performance, the audience was silent. Quiet as the most formal theater experience I’ve been a part of. I consider this – in a bar – to be one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. I also had quite a bit of positive feedback, as well as a few comments that got me thinking about disclosure.
I disclose a lot about myself. (SEE: The blog you are reading right at this very moment.) My performance pieces may not be entirely disclosure-based – there’s some storytelling and fantasy, too – but they are entirely built around my experiences with gender and identity. I’m speaking to a class of middle school students soon, and it’ll be about on the same topic. I fully and completely appreciate disclosure as a cathartic, rewarding, and empowering act.
And yet certain types of disclosure – the type of disclosure that my brand of self-narrative work apparently evokes in certain people – makes me quite uncomfortable.
She can't even read that! It's facing away from her! Stop looking so shocked!
I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine, Rose, about pornography and acting. She is involved in the sex industry, has worked as a prostitute and escort, and occasionally does both photographic and film pornography. She mentioned she’d recently finished a shoot where she had earned more in five hours than I’ve yet to earn in all of January.
Curious about her experiences, I asked what being in porn was like. Specifically, whether she viewed it as a sexual experience or a ‘this is an action I’m doing because I’m getting paid’ experience. Rose said that it was the latter: really not much more enjoyable than serving coffee or collating copies, just quite a bit more lucrative.
The conversation got me thinking about what we – as audience members – ask of actors. Because going to a play almost always involves some suspension of disbelief. Perhaps Chicago’s Neofuturists toe the line of theatre which requires no suspension of disbelief, but they’re in the minority. For the most part, going to a show involves allowing ourselves to believe that the actors are their characters. That they’re falling in love, planning for battle, forging alliances, destroying relationships, and on and on and on. When I go to a play I could sit there the entire time thinking, “Well, she’s not really in love with him. He doesn’t really find what she says so funny as to laugh out loud.” But that would make me miserable, so I suspend my disbelief and allow their actions to read as true.
That’s not how viewing porn seems to work, however. For whatever reason, audiences want to believe the people they’re watching are really attracted to each other (even if only on a physical level) and do reach a real, satisfying, climactic (natch) orgasm.
Why is that?
Continue reading 'What do we ask of actors? What about in porn?'»
Still working on getting the full No Gender Left Behind footage online, but here are some promos someone from Chicago Fringe put together. Also getting back on track with regular posting, so stay tuned!
Everyone in Chicago should know about (and already have seen one million times) Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, the Chicago theatrical institution of 30 plays in 60 minutes. From their website:
Too Much Light…, with its ever-changing “menu,” is an attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes. The single unifying element of these plays is that they are performed from a perspective of absolute honesty.
So I was a little surprised to come across this listing at Indy Fringe:
The Bloomington Playwrights Project presents The Blizzard, an evening of 30 super-short plays performed in 60 minutes. The Blizzard is short-attention span theatre at a breakneck pace. An ensemble of five actors will be performing each piece in a spontaneous random order selected by you, the audience. To add even more fun, the performers will try to finish all 30 plays in under 60 minutes!
When I asked one of the performers about its striking similarity to Too Much Light he replied somewhat sheepishly “Oh, yeah, we stole it from them.”
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