Producing Trans Performance: ‘Transness’ beyond testimony in I, Joan (2022)

Abstract

Trans performance has arrived in the last twenty years. Having previously encountered producing narratives that frame trans people as either undertrained or impossible to find, I approach the Shakespeare Globe’s staging of I, Joan (2022) by Charlie Josephine as a case study on the possible futures of trans-led creativity. Josephine’s trans retelling of the Joan of Arc story, coupled with the Globe’s commitment to a creative team of mostly gender-diverse creatives, signals a significant shift in what ‘trans’ means for producing venues. I, Joan is an experiment, I argue, in valuing transness beyond utilitarian educational aims and towards a vital cultural standpoint. In this presentation, I adopt I, Joan as a case study in mapping shifts in producing cultures since the emergence of named ‘trans performance’ and ‘trans theatre’ in the late 2000s – whether as a genre or method – and its current creative focus away from typically one-person testimonials to collective expressions of ‘transness’. In particular, I map this shift in relationship to the critical agent of the producer role and the creative arguments for what trans professionals, including but also beyond the performer role, bring to a collaborative process.

Building on an ongoing survey of trans performance, I consider the comfortability (for producers) of trans testimony as educational has (possibly inadvertently) siloed trans voices and rendered them ‘manageable’, ‘self-contained’, and ‘safe’. However, today there is evidence that producers see an audience and a need for radical transness beyond testimony. Drawing on Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism (2020), this presentation will offer an overview of trans performance innovations in the last few years and argue for a renewed producing criteria when programming trans-led works.

This paper offers an introduction to my initial survey of performance works by trans artists to investigate political self-determinism in the early 21st century. ‘Trans performance’ is used here as a loose umbrella term for performance work developed by and for trans people. Built upon a survey from 2010 onwards, I argue that self affirmed trans performance has began to undertake an aesthetic and political turn away from autobiographic narratives - aimed at educating cis (non-trans) audiences - to offering tools for trans liberation. Artists such as Emma Frankland, Travis Alabanza, and Tabby Lamb have all stated a need to transgress the troupe of the traumatic trans story and instead offer social models of trans joy. I propose that our current social model is one of ‘cisgenderism’; or the social and legal preference of cis experience over trans experience. I argue that a new wave of trans performance works is seeking to offer a platform for identifying and negotiating the tactics of cisgenderism. Indeed, I propose that this shift is marked by a turn towards trans audiences. No longer focused on educating cis audiences on the impact of infantilising trans folk (where cis people act as gatekeepers to medical, social and political reform), this shift, I suggest, is focused on modelling trans self determinism beyond cis social imaginaries. I ask: what role can trans performance play in investigating models of trans liberation? What does it mean to make performance for trans audiences? I conclude with a brief manifesto for studying trans performance within the social, political, and legal contexts of cisgenderism.