Within the context of this project we have chosen to explore gender and identity. One interesting way we clarify that exploration is with this question:

“How do we navigate gender in our everyday lives?”

To navigate: • verb 1 plan and direct the route or course of a ship, aircraft, or other form of transport. 2 sail or travel over. 3 guide (a vessel or vehicle) over a specified route.

It’s origin is the Latin navigare, “to sail.”(The Oxford English Dictionary)

Fascinating imagery: direct, transport, travel, guide, route, sail

How specific, how direct. Why then is the concept of gender navigation less concrete?

I thought about this concept as I walked up Polk Place this morning, heading to my ten o’clock class, weaving in and out of students as late as I was. Literal navigation; my body, as a vessel or vehicle, was moving through space. Each footstep bringing me closer to my destination. Translating this idea to my thoughts on gender I realized that perhaps the reason why the concept is so difficult is because there is no tangible destination. All of the definitions above consider navigation as a plan, a guide, a route; yet gender is undetermined and ever changing. It evolves from a series of constructed images, thoughts, gestures, etc. and not simply from the consultation of a map.

How then do we navigate gender in our everyday lives?

I wear a skirt. I have short, curly hair. I apply blush and mascara before leaving the house.

These things make me feel feminine.

I am a leader. I am assertive. I carry weight in my feet.

These things make me feel masculine.

Navigation? I’m not sure.

I liken this exploration to a conversation I recently had with the director of Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day (produced by LAB! Theatre, as part of The Gender Project). He explained his thoughts on gender and Kushner’s dramaturgy. The piece allows for an exploration of character without the constraints of traditional male or female roles. Each character then becomes defined by their own series of entrances and exits, dialogue, interaction, and gesture.

Navigation? A realistic representation I believe.

If what determines navigation is not only a plan or guide, but movement as well then it seems relevant to consider the journey in addition to the destination.

Do you navigate? How so? How often? How conciously?

Friday, April 3 – Sunday, April 5.

The Southeastern Regional Unity Conference is an annual gathering of progressive lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer identified people and their allies in the Southeast. It was founded to create dialogues about the intersections of gender and sexuality with ability, age, class, faith, health, and race/ethnicity, to explore strategies for effective grassroots organizing, and to share work that we and other LGBTIQ activists are doing in the Southeast.

Check out the UNITY Conference website to find out more about performances, workshops, parties and more!  Registration is free for UNC students, but donations are appreciated.

Workshop themes/questions this year include:

Transactions: How do we create safe and healthy relationships?
You’re Not a Lesbian!: Challenges and Joys for Partners of Transmen
Gender Fucking and Fucking: A Radical Exploration of Identity and Practice
A Transgender Journey: Being a Lover or an Ally to Folks in Transition
Between the Sheets: Tips for a Healthy Sex Life
Defending Marriage

Transfigurations: Can we, should we define ourselves?
Utilizing a Queer Identity to Escape the Gender Binary
Bi One, Get One Free!: Sexual Labels in a Postmodern World
Transgender Spirituality: Historic Categories, Contemporary Understandings
Sweet or Unsweet?  Gay or Straight?  Do you have to decide?
Drag: The Possibilities of Gender Queering in Performance

Transgressions: What can we do as LGBTIQ and allied activists?
Better Advocacy with the Advo.Kit
Creating Change in your Community
Bridging the Gap:  Making Health Services Inclusive of Diverse Gender Identities and Expressions
To a T: An Interactive Theatre Scene on Heterosexism and Gender at Carolina
Performance for Social Change

Transformations: How do we build safe, powerful, inclusive communities?
Difference, Unity, & Struggle: Building Queer Community & Power
Transforming the Workplace: Being ‘Out’ in your Career
Beyond the Clubs and .Coms: Creating Inclusive Communities for Gay/Bisexual Men
Trans Surgery Show and Tell

Transparency: What’s the state of our movement?
Gay in the Media: A Critical Look at How Far We Have(n’t) Come
Mapping Our Rights: An Interactive Advocacy Tool for Legal Change
Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House: Challenging the Ex-Gay Movement
The State of Equality in North Carolina: Policy, Education, Action
TransPraxis: An Academic Exploration of the Queer Moment

Transculturations: How can we critically examine and celebrate our intersecting identities?
HomoHop: Queer Masculinities in Hip Hop Culture
Transnational Families: Immigration Activism
Whiteness, Power, and Privilege
NC LGBT People of Color
Living with Disability

This semester, I’m taking a class through the UNC department of Performance Studies called Gender, Performance, Sexuality, which is co-taught by Joseph Megel and Renee Alexander Craft, and if I previously had any questions as to whether these issues are hot, heavy and complex, I have none now.  In just the first three weeks of class, we have explored these issues at such depth and through such pointed and personal lenses that minds are being blown, mine included.

On the first day of class, we interviewed another about an early memory when gender was mapped onto us.  The second day, we performed each other’s stories, and the results were profound to say the least.  The intensity of many of the experiences shared was matched only in the trust and care shown by the class toward one another.  Still, to hear my own story performed me was jarring, and gave me new insight into my own story and my own childhood that I hadn’t realized in its telling.  Throughout the class, even though we had only known each other for six hours, tears were shed and bonds were built.  The agreed-upon safety of the space allowed us to reach ground and touch upon issues that many present had never spoken of with even their family and closest friends.  The beauty of the class, using performance to explore issues of gender and sexuality, is that both gender and sexuality are rooted in the daily, mundane performance of patterns and rituals we often take for granted.  Performing about our genders lets us realize more about the performed nature of our genders.

Perhaps the most inspiring aspect of the class to me is the diversity of the students.  There are queer students, students of color, straight students, gay students, white students, athletes, academics, those who have performed their entire lives and those who have never stepped on a stage.  The different points from which we all jump into this work serves to create a rich, dynamic, and moving mosaic, and I can only look nervously and excitedly forward to where this work will take all of us.

Late: A Cowboy Song, a play by Sarah Ruhl, is an understated examination of the feminine spirit. It is also a subtle look at the definition of gender (perspective, tradition, ritual). Not so subtly the play also explores the concept of time. It is a quick read, but engaging none the less.

I also recommend Ruhl’s Eurydice, a re-imagining of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Both can be found in The Clean House and Other Plays by Sarah Ruhl (ISBN 1559362669 9781559362665 in Davis Library, call number PS3618.U48 C57 2006).

In other news I will be leaving for a semester abroad this week. I will be studying in Dublin, Ireland and will be posting my gender thoughts from there. Continue to participate, and have a fantastic spring semester.

For some, it evokes Bob Dylan, articulating the refrain of a restless generation while strumming on his guitar between wisps of vocals and harmonica. For others, it’s a large graffiti-mural piece on the side of a building reclaiming public space for the public good, vibrant colors and empowering images with perhaps a banner-message tagged to sum it all up.

For DV8, the medium of choice is theatre. Their topic in To Be Straight With You addresses the many and diverse attitudes in society concerning homosexuality. These attitudes vary from subtle hypocrisy to outright violent hostility, denial to damning, concession to persevering resistance. I felt that by adopting the interviewees as characters, the performers effectively took the often oversimplified or grossly generalized perceptions of both camps on the issue and, through heartfelt, authentic reenactment, helped me to better see the nuances of this complex situation. Who do we condemn? What do we condemn?

To me, one particular focus of the play was that our attitudes towards homosexuality are an exercise in moral/cultural relativism and as a result, are characterized by those same vexing conundrums: how much of a person’s views are determined by cultural construct, by traditions, by those elements which are never absolute? DV8 does a fantastic job in intimating the many roots of the current perceptions of homosexuality. At one point, while the audience ooh’d and ahh’d (don’t pretend to be jaded—we all thought it was cool) as an actor conjured a large globe, he highlighted and colored sections while spinning statistics and facts about the laws of different nations and religions. By investigating this angle, I really thought that To Be Straight With You strived, at least, to condemn no one– or at least to pass judgement for you. Rather, it put the characters within their appropriate context, for isolated, it would be too easy to pigeonhole them as the hero or the villain which we might even subconsciously seek.

DV8’s performance of To Be Straight With You was definitely no one-act or two-part, break-here-for-intermission and resume-plot-line piece. The company created a collage of stories all compiled through interviews. Together, these stories defied the “sit there and listen” attitude that a lecture might have emulated had it been addressing similarly heated issues. Rather, the stories set the scene for an evening with an accessible and inspiring “let’s think about this” message.

DV8’s work stitched together anthropology, journalism, oral history, multimedia, dance, acting, and technology into a seamless and mutually reinforcing collaboration of mediums, none of which detracted from the other, but each somehow heightening the audience’s engagement with the overall message thanks to the individual role of each. A story is accompanied by a dance, and the dance is accompanied by music which swells at every climax of a story. Suddenly, simple casual jump roping becomes more urgent as the actor recounts of his father’s reaction to his homosexuality, and the gentle pattering of rope meeting ground becomes the threatening and breathless fury of an enraged patriarch or the helplessly frantic footsteps of the protagonists’ escape. In one scene, a recording of an interview with the British prime minister’s wife where she voices her desire to “help” gay people by encouraging them to convert to a heterosexual lifestyle is interrupted between questions by a raucous, feet-thumping, drunken tune as actors dressed with horse-head masks stomp around in an absurdist dance. The message this seemed to drive home is that the self-perceived beneficence of the speaker is no more than debasement of homosexuals to animals. The idea of manipulating their behavior is eerily similar to the domestication of wile, unruly beasts—an unsettling suggestion throughout an otherwise hilariously satirical part.

The result is a piece which is rich and multifaceted. The pace is smooth, and the images are lasting.

Equally lasting are the questions and concerns. For both nights after the show, the student group SHOWW with Arts tried to give the audience members a creative outlet of their own in which to respond to the show and to the issue presented. In the lobby, our blank sheet of white paper was quickly made replete with accolades for the piece (including a proud shout-out to the director from his father-in-law), depictions of scenes, follow-up questions, and other doodles grappling with gender issues (ex: soccer cleat with high heel, blue and pink baby toys, etc.)

Ultimately, as vexing as the relativist conundrums might be and as impenetrably grey those shades are, DV8 does provide a clear stance for one universal ideal: open dialogue. And To Be Straight With You proves to be another excellent answer to what social justice and the arts might look and sound like.

(click on the thumbnails below for a larger image)

What are your thoughts on the use of imagery and spectacle – in the context of this project, and in general as well. How effective are these images in communicating a message? What message do they communicate?

In the program notes, the director, Ong Keng Sen, states that “Vivien and The Shadows is inspired by the ‘taboo’ concept of copying”. The work addresses the tension between the Eastern and Western traditions of art. This is a topic that has interested me for a while now; the Asian way of learning art (be it theater, music, painting, etc.) is to copy the master until one can achieve the exact same level of ability – only then can one be considered an artist. However, in the Western world copying is seen in a negative light, and originality is praised. We would much rather a child draw an original blob than trace the Mona Lisa. Can original art be formed from a copy of another?
Vivien and The Shadows begins with one performer copying the movements and expressions of Blanche DuBois in the film A Streetcar Named Desire. Throughout the entire play, the movie plays on small screens offstage, and some scenes were projected onto a large screen, with performers copying the movements of the original actors. Yet Vivien and The Shadows was much more than a rerun of A Streetcar Named Desire – it was a work of art in its own right. When does a copy become more than a copy?

Theater as an art form inherently must deal with the issue of copying. When one acts, one is copying the movements, the gestures, the inflections of something or someone else. We don’t expect an actress to actually get stabbed onstage, we expect her to act as if she were. What is the difference? Is there a difference?

Another large theme in the play was the fluidity of illusion, appearances, and our definition of self. The performers constantly changed outfits, wigs, makeup, speech… everything. There was no single coherent plotline, and all the performers narrated in the first person, with no single main character. One point made was that illusions and darkness can sometimes free us and allow us to be our “true” selves. One character was an accountant by day and could only let his gay self be known at night, in the shadows. This reminded me of the summer reading book, Covering, and a question common to both works: how much of who we are is defined by how we look, and what we do? How does our appearance define us to others?

Although some parts were difficult to watch or hard to understand, I enjoyed the play overall. It was definitely experimental theater, but it was thought-provoking and quite beautiful at times. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to see the world premiere of this piece, and I hope that it can spark dialogue about the illusions and shadows in our own lives.

-Fei Fei Wang
Honors Arts and Dialogue Program
Freshman, biology and music double major

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Monday, November 3, 2008 5:30pm
Great Hall – student Union

Members of Chapel Hill’s Deep Dish Theater Company will perform excerpts of the last play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, which is a fierce and funny look at gender politics in academia and struggles over intellectual freedom, followed by a conversation led by Donna Bickford.

Come join us for this special event!

The full title of the piece is Pouring Tea: Gay Black Men of the South Tell Their Tales, and tell they did. Johnson illustrated the men he interviewed by portraying each in an honest, respectful manner. He took care in sharing inflection and tone tendencies, as well as physical characteristics and mannerisms. It was also important to Johnson to include an audio excerpt of each interview, so as to consistently remind audiences that his performance reflected human beings, rather than fictional characters. Johnson gracefully touched several areas of sensitivity including sexual violence, exploration of gender identity and family relations. The stories were vastly different and each offered a unique perspective, yet all explored one similar theme: gender is a constructed progression. Just as personality is cultivated, fluid, and changing gender is a malleable concept.

This was most evident in the story of Chaz, a transgendered male who had for, a significant portion of his life, considered sex change surgery. His words speak louder than my own.

“My ideal life now is just to embrace everything that makes me who I am. All of my indifference, all of my attributes, all of my qualities, as well as my faults, and to realize that God has made no mistakes in making me, that his words said, I was fearfully and wonderfully made. Who am I to say anything different? But because of that, keeping that in retrospect to the way that society treats you because of your indifference, I’m at a level of maturity where I no longer am overly concerned about what people say or think about me, or my lifestyle, or my life choices, for that matter. I feel that the most important person in my life is me. If I’m not happy, if I’m not well, if I’m not content, then anything else is irrelevant. And then, once I’ve established that happiness, being content with who I am, and with where I am at, then I can appreciate others, and add to the quality of their lives (356, Sweet Tea).”

Why is dialogue so integral to performance? It was evident in the performance, as the piece was based on conversation. Yet, I still wonder what about dialogue is so nursing, satisfying, helpful? What about “story spinning” and conversation makes it feel so innate?

Let me know your thoughts, and continue to contribute.

We have a number of exciting, unique performances coming up. Details are published here and can also be found at http://www.carolinaperformingarts.org/creativecampus/.