A while later, some of us did a cameo somewhere else in a tranny cabaret show. As S observed, tranny shows here (at least the ones that appear in public theatres with subsidies) are all the same and have more to do with religious ritual–Easter in Seville, Castro speeches–than art, intellect or invention: men acquire extravagant costumes, playback expertly to mediocre disco and musical tracks (imagine 13-year old girls at an end-of-term school performance), and end, hand on crotch, with a wistful reference to love; the audience cheer wildly and for no apparent reason and go away feeling even more tolerant and beautiful than they did betwixt their linen sheets that morning.

There’s some psychology pseudo-theory somewhere that says that trannies inherently lack creativity, that they are condemned to copy. I think the truth is more mundane: these performers haven’t woken up to the great diversification of narrative and style in the last decade, when Nova called drag “the drug of the 90s” (Laurence Senelick, The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre) and when this kind of act made way for more experimental approaches.

Categories: Dance, Les bourgeois, Music, Theatre

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