The first company I co-created after graduating college was “All The Kings Men“. We were a drag performance group of 7 (at the time identifying) women who performed mostly male characters on stage. We played all the roles in the 15 years we were together: men, women, nonbinary characters, queer, straight, pets, objects, kids, old nursing home residents… Our troupe excelled at storytelling through dance and physical theater, while twisting and reworking the meaning of those very messages utilizing overt gender-play layered in meta realization about who was on stage.
After spending a fair amount of time performing predominantly in male drag, I started creating more female drag pieces—what we (somewhat inarticulately) refer to as “Burlesque”. I brought characters like “Rico” to my troupe, and eventually was performing on stages in collaboration with the burlesque community in the Boston area and beyond. I still performed male roles regularly, and steadily added female and high femme characters to my résumé. It’s been an interesting personal and artistic journey, reflecting on gender via character creation, in my three decades creating performances for the cabaret.
This coming April I’ll be performing in a production of “Dracula” produced by The Slaughterhouse Society. I love performing with this troupe and getting to work my art into their productions. The character I was cast as is a thing, not a whom. I’m delighted to take this assignment on, and am having fun finding the sexy-non-sexed intersection between my identity, my changed-because-of-HRT body, and the ultimate goal: to shine as the character I’m playing without apology. Celebrating my own body unapologetically is still, even after all of these years, something I stumble on.
All over the world people are executed for being gay, and are treated as property and denied basic rights and mobility because of their sex and/or gender identity. I’m an United States citizen. I’m white, college educated, and very privileged all things considered. I categorically reject the idea that some human beings are more valuable than others. It is my job as an artist and as a world citizen to share in the burden of changing these things in whatever ways I may.
The first time I remember having “gender feels” was around age 7, when I was told to put a shirt on as I gardened with my father in the mid-summer sun. He was not wearing a shirt. I remember being furious. It was unfair and I felt betrayed. Not only was I being told to do something I did not want to do, I was being told to do so by a man hypocritically enjoying the privilege of his station. I didn’t understand sex and gender double standards at that age, but I very clearly felt them from that moment on. This is my first concrete memory of being told I was a second class citizen.
I am a human being. I am not an “ess”. I am not “Mr(‘)s”. I’m no more or less physically threatening wearing a shirt or not than my breastless or “male nippled” friends. I reject every law putting a restriction on my body due to the “F” on my birth certificate, not because I don’t love being a woman and celebrating my female body, but because that “F” stands for “(F)ailure to live a life without appealing to (M)ales. The male gaze, the male boss, the fallout from male fraternization, the male authorities… Understandably it’s been a long (still unwinding) journey learning to love the (F)em within me. I am as masculine as they come when it comes to shoveling snow, fixing my van, washing dishes, sewing costumes, or any other non-sexed task requiring a keen mind, some heart, and a reasonable amount of physical exertion. I am as feminine and as androgynous as well, tripping through my daily chores and interacting with people meaningfully.
I came out to myself as non-binary trans a few years ago. Since that time I’ve started taking HRT, enjoying the results of testosterone shots weekly. My body has changed in certain ways, and in some ways it remains the same. I’ve been refiguring my understanding of how I read on stage, whether I’m playing a male, female, masculine, femme, or character representing somewhere in between. It’s been a mental and emotional battle to perform some of the older pieces of mine, especially ones which require me to embody high femininity. I haven’t settled my feelings on that side of things yet. I want to rework costumes and look anew at how I say what I’m saying. I feel more and more clearly that my years of “playing” masculine characters was a way to actively “be” myself more wholly—a release valve for the tension of being read and treated predominantly as a woman-female-femme-person-thing in ways which have never resonated comfortably for me.
When I catch myself in the mirror as I walk around naked in the morning, or as I dress for the day, I see a collision of soft curves, and female body parts. I see facial hair, increased body hair, and a more (than before) masculine thickness to my body. I love this view and I think it’s sexy. I want to frame the both and the all and be seen like this publicly. I want to see this character represented on the stage. How does one get cast as a non-gendered creature possessing clashing and bemusing qualities of femininity, masculinity, and androgynousness on stage—and strike that discord effectively and/or pleasantly?
The obvious answer is that I just show up and do it. Be. I am myself, and genderqueer is a part of my public face and simple reality. Whoever I’m cast to be will be these things too, unless I change my appearance to read more binary. I’m excited to be more aesthetically myself on stage these days, and to work less at physically transmuting into something archetypically gendered and other. “Showing up” is the first lesson I teach my performance and creativity students. I feel it’s time that as I show up for myself in my personal life by embracing my fluid identity, I also show up for my audience and the stage in these ways too. Visibility.
It’s hard. Very scary. I’m learning anew about how I might or might not be accepted and appreciated by my audience these days. There have definitely been growing pains—but I’m growing. I’m excited to take Dracula by the fang, and show up for the role I’m creating and playing as I want to be seen. I will always want to play all the things, just as I have always wanted to be all of the things, brilliantly.
Play On My Friends,
~ Creature
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