Nothing More To Say’s 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals is an eye-opening and insightful hour on the VAULT Festival
“I want this to be a validating experience for you. Can I suck your…?”
How to encapsulate the trans expertise in an hour-long present? By setting up 52 Monologues for Young Transsexuals clearly. Writer/performers Laurie Ward and Charli Cowgill, together with director Ilona Sell, clearly have an eye fixed (and a receptacle) for the outré – we’re requested if we might spit right into a cup as we enter the Studio – and the theatrical, but additionally have an actual sense of goal right here.
Blending verbatim theatre with one thing approaching cabaret (after all there’s lipsyncs…), the present speaks of hard-won expertise and with a lot of the modern discourse being as it’s, how else may it’s. What elevates this over any variety of clickbaity thinkpieces although is the authenticity of its voice and its want to light up and illustrate, fairly than incite.
Unafraid of presenting duelling opinions – differing takes on what make-up is used for, existential questions on being a lady versus trying like a lady, the desirability of ‘passing’ – and sophisticated situations, significantly the place sexuality is anxious, there’s an actual sense of how a lot must be negotiated within the day-to-day lifetime of so many trans individuals.
Interactions with potential lovers on relationship apps, misogynistic exchanges with precise lovers that show erotic, choreography that dances across the carefulness with which they’ve to barter bodily house, the mandatory sense of humour to try to assist navigate the psychological challenges of simply current. One may want that point will deliver extra reveals about trans-womanhood that may transfer past the sexual realm however you actually hope Nothing More To Say are amongst these telling them.