Two weeks from today will be opening night for Uncovering the Mirrors at the Chicago Fringe Festival. Please buy your tickets today or find it in your heart to donate!
As a teaser, here’s some text from my upcoming show:
The Land of Gender, part one
Once upon a time there was a complex and mysterious land: the Land of Gender.
Gender was a dense place, thick with hidden secrets. The terrain was unknowable, the wilderness untamed: brambly groves, swirling rivers, deep canyons, towering forests. The Land resisted any attempt to understand or define it.
Explorers embarked on great journeys to survey Gender, to make sense of its breadth and variety. Because the terrain had an infinite number of vistas – expansive deserts, lofty mountains, cresting oceans – each explorer came away from the Land of Gender with a different understanding of the landscape. But none of these vantage points proved any more complete or detailed than any other; no explorer had any better view of Gender than any other.
For untold ages, attempting to put the Land of Gender to paper, to capture its shape, was impossible. Cartography was useless, inadequate. The land refused to be charted or unified by a singular map. It continued to exist in only the experiences of those who ventured into the unknowns, their disparate accounts and partial understandings.
While most explorers were content with the mysteries and fluidity of the Land of Gender, one explorer in particular wished desperately to strip the Land of its relentlessness. Where other explorers would enjoy the mysteries of the Land of Gender, this explorer found fear and panic. And so He set about developing a map which could measure, manage, and master the Land of Gender once and for all.
Going through notes, I found this old outline of what I was thinking about for the solo performance while I was working on it. The most recent edit was on 9/30/08.
- Start with the first section of Ares and Aphrodite
- I think that works well going into Children’s Games, though I’m not sure. I also need to write something about bathing suits, and maybe this is a a good place to put it.
- Second section of Ares and Aphrodite
- Talk about fear of change – needs new writing. I think I should talk about separation anxiety and fears I had going into puberty (not that I saw them that way at the time, but looking back in retrospect…)
- Third section of Ares and Aphrodite – needs to be written. A jump taking the story from 10 (following the dream) to 20 (when the main character does something about it)
Continue reading 'Performance layout (a draft)'»
Apogonos had been struck at birth by the shaft of Ares.
It’s true.
The gods on high looked down from Olympus and saw him, barely formed, and Ares, god of war, of bloodshed, of the slaughter, picked up his bow and notched an arrow, straight and true.
It was an arrow dipped in poison.
Now, let it be said that not all the weapons of Ares are dipped in poison. Some are objects of great strength, of power. Walking with Ares need not mean death and destruction. But, for Apogonos, it was a poison arrow.
But, perhaps, by beginning at the beginning I have in fact done a disservice to the story. So let us, for a moment, take a step back and cast a wider net.
Continue reading 'Ares and Aphrodite Myth – To the Cusp of Manhood'»
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