Today it’s… slightly tired but hopeful?

There’s an experimental theater company in my city that does, well, experimental theater. Its very left and very not white and very queer and I really love it. I go often. I wanna tell you about it a little bit and I hope that’s okay.

They do a show twice a week which is 30 plays in 60 minutes. If they don’t get to all 30 in that 60 mins well, sucks for you, you didn’t get to see all of them. The plays are all written and performed by the company themselves, and every week they delete a random number of plays from their list of 30 and write new ones to replace them for next week’s show. Those shows are gone forever.

As you could guess, it’s chaotic and unpredictable and fun.

Sometimes the plays are funny, sometimes they’re not. They might be a throw away gag, or a lengthy story about the writers life, or a short sketch about something topical. You never really know what you’ll get. The company promises though that they will never lie to you and that they will only perform things from their own experience. They hope you will be true to yourself too.

One time they threw creamed corn on the audience. Another they walked around the room and whispered their life ambitions to people in the audience and asked about theirs. Yet another they sat on the stage and knitted part of a sock while telling us how they got into knitting.

Sometimes they stick with you. Sometimes they don’t. They’re not all winners.

One that stuck with me was one I saw over a year ago now, and I think about it a lot. One of the gender fluid cast members rolled an overhead projector out onto the stage and the other cast sat in a semicircle around them with notepads. The writer would shout GENDER? and slap an overhead sheet on the projector. The sheet contained words with a theme. One was seasons. One was colors. One was feelings. One was birds. You get the idea. Between each sheet the cast wrote something down and then the writer would shout GENDER? and replace the sheet with a new one.

When they got to the end each cast member read out their list. One was Green Spring Somber Robin, another was Black Fall Happy Bluejay, etc. They were all different. They were all unique. But they all got to choose for themselves and we all got to be a part of it with them.

The writer then read out theirs, and just ended the play with “It surprised me when I started performing this one that every time I do this, I find myself answering differently.” And that was the end of it. I think after that one is when they threw creamed corn on us.

At the time I wasn’t really sure what gender meant to me either. Over time though my partner and I would look at each other and go “Gender?” and just say “today I feel like sweaty corn” or “today I feel like a hot pizza” or whatever we felt that day. And others would join in too just saying who they felt like in that moment too. It’s become a fun way for us to validate ourselves and each other in who we are in that moment, no matter how serious or silly the answer is.

It was formative for me because some people wouldn’t really change their answers, and some people would lean into it and have fun with it and come up with the silliest answer they could, and everything in between too. It became a way for me to identify with others in a way I hadn’t really done before. Kinda made me look at gender differently too. Some folks pick one and they keep it forever and it’s theirs and they’re comfortable in it and that’s okay. Others change it like the wind, shifting and ebbing and flowing with each new thing they experience, and that’s okay too. Gender is a construct, we can all be whatever we want. Whoever we want. Whenever we want. Our gender is ours, it belongs to us, and that means it’s up to us and only us how we choose to define it, and it’s up to the rest of us to accept that and love that about both ourselves and each other too, no matter how the individual defines it. It’s a part of our identity. It might relate to your biology, or not. It might relate to your pronouns, or not. It might relate to how you present to the world, or not. No matter what though it’s part of you and who you are, and I just think that’s neat.

So, I’ll ask again because many of you probably didn’t get it the first time but I hope you do now.

Gender?