How Do Transpeople Talk? Writing Characters Beyond a Gender Binary
20 February 2015
MJ Kaufman begins a new blog series, exploring questions of gender and parity in the world of performance. In this installment, he looks at how transpeople talk.
Beyond Angry Lesbians and Gay Best Friends: Writing Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century
Tuesday 25 November 25 2014
New York, NY, United States
Dramatists Guild of America presented the conversation Beyond Angry Lesbians and Gay Best Friends: Writing Gender and Sexuality in the 21st Century livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Tuesday 25 November 25at 2:30 p.m. PST (Los Angeles)/ 4:30 p.m. CST (Chicago)/ 5:30 p.m. EST (New York)/ 22:30 GMT (London).
I don’t want to write an article about how we don’t see enough of a certain kind of people on stage. We are all working within an unfortunate system that, for the most part, elevates the work that mirrors itself. Instead of talking about production, I want to write about the art that we are making, because we are artists making art, whether it’s produced or not.
I’m at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in the women’s restroom washing my hands. A woman walks in, “I must be in the wrong place,” she says and walks out. Then she walks back in, “No, you’re in the wrong place,” she says, seething with confidence. I walk out, not sure of my place.
I gravitated towards performance art. Many questions emerged from my practice. What am I on fire to do? What gender(s) can I explore? Where is the niche for performers like me? How do I engage my entire history? Do I pursue opportunities that call for a specific gender(s)? Who is my audience? How do I market myself effectively? Will my intentions and choices determine how I am read or is that something outside my control?
Imagine, if you will, a slumber party. A group of tweens huddles around a television in the carpeted family room of a two-story house. Most of them stare, mouths slightly open, entranced by leading man Leonardo DiCaprio. Caught up in his twenty-something good looks, they have found what they’re looking for. But not all of them. Not me.
In About Face Youth Theatre’s rehearsal space, there is a cluster of post-it notes on the wall titled “Where I Started.” The ensemble’s first impressions range from “not being satisfied” to “ready to just do something” to “oblivion.” These notes relate to the process of AFYT’s current play, Checking Boxes.
looks at how Magic Theatre's initative for young theatre-goes went beyond a discount, and how the premiere of Taylor Mac's Hir at the Magic complemented their earlier production of Buried Child.
Damien Atkins, Paul Dunn, and Andrew Kushnir explore gay heritage while questioning whether such a thing can actually exist resulting in a living archive in a play structure.
Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is an old story of Wilde’s relations with the Queen’s son yet, with the current politics, still holds discussion today of the morality of law.
Creating and producing social advocacy theatre faces many roadblocks. Emily Freeman learned that exercising relentlessness while practicing love is the best way to find an audience.
Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company presented a reading of 8 and a town-hall style discussion of same-sex marriage livestreamed on the global, commons-based peer-produced HowlRound TV network at howlround.tv on Monday 4 June 2012 at 5:45 p.m. PDT / 7:45 p.m. CDT / 8:45 p.m. EDT.