A playful exploration of gender performance
432,854 views |
Jo Michael Rezes |
TEDxTufts
• March 2020
From the stage to everyday life, theater educator Jo Michael Rezes studies queer identity and the spectrum of gender performance — in its success and failure. Aided by a delightful introduction of campy charm, Rezes explores the freeing potential of playing with gender to better understand ourselves, each other and the spaces we inhabit.
From the stage to everyday life, theater educator Jo Michael Rezes studies queer identity and the spectrum of gender performance — in its success and failure. Aided by a delightful introduction of campy charm, Rezes explores the freeing potential of playing with gender to better understand ourselves, each other and the spaces we inhabit.
This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxTufts, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Read more about TEDx.Support The Theater Offensive, True Colors OUT Youth Theater — an out-of-school, community-based theater program to train LGBTQ+ youth leaders.
About the speaker
Jo Michael Rezes creates theatre in collaboration with inspiring artists scattered between fringe and professional companies.
Judith Butler | Routledge, 2006 | Book
Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
While I directly cite "Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory" (1988) in my talk, Butler’s theory of gender as an improvised and embodied performance is expanded in this text. This work is known as one foundational to queer theory, and also very timely in continued discussions against biological essentialism in forming gender identity, and the difference between sex and gender.
José Esteban Muñoz | University of Minnesota Press, 1999 | Book
Disidentifications: Queers Of Color And The Performance Of Politic
A book that I keep on my desk in arm’s reach as I teach acting, Camp studies and creativity in times of crisis! Muñoz’s theory of disidentification looks at how artists outside of the sexual and racial mainstream negotiate and resist majority culture through the transformation of works which exclude, stereotype or otherwise hurt.
Jack Halberstam | Duke University Press Books, 2011 | Book
The Queer Art of Failure
This is the first text on queer theory I ever read! And I still come back to it in my research and for creating activities within the classroom. A close deep-dive into the transformative power of childishness, the bumbling interplay of high and low art, Halberstam’s book offers failure as a tool for measuring creative and community-based ways of being and performing in the world.
Kareem Khubchandani | Theatre Topics, 2015 | Article
“Lessons in Drag: An Interview with LaWhore Vagistan”
Dr. Khubchandani and LaWhore Vagistan PhD have taught me more about queer pedagogy by simply being a student in their classroom at Tufts University than I have from teaching students myself. While you may never have the privilege to take a class with Kareem Khubchandani (or LaWhore), this article offers a look into the potential of using performance to teach performance. “Lessons in drag” transform the classroom into inclusive environments for students’ gender identities and expressions, show that Butler’s theory of performativity does not stop at clothing, but includes “bodily comportment and kinesthetics,” and reveal that racialized and gendered bodies of educators can be mobilized into fierce dialogue with course materials, artists, and theoretical texts.
Jaclyn Pryor | Northwestern University Press, 2017 | Book
Time Slips: Queer Temporalities, Contemporary Performance, and the Hole of History
Pryor’s work is a blueprint for discussing slippages of normative time in and around performance worlds and contemporary art.
Especially in a pandemic moment, I feel that this is a vital read for artists attempting to disrupt notions of live performance beyond theatre’s boundaries, hegemonic modes of knowing and memory, and time itself.
Especially in a pandemic moment, I feel that this is a vital read for artists attempting to disrupt notions of live performance beyond theatre’s boundaries, hegemonic modes of knowing and memory, and time itself.
John Meredith, M Sloth Levine and the Gender Explosion Working Group | Explore
Gender Explosion Initiative
These resources are brought to the theatre world through the fabulous work of transgender activists and artists in New England via StageSource! Though, this ongoing project for equity, parity, and inclusion for all genders in amateur, educational, and professional theater cannot be limited to one community. Theatre is an overwhelmingly cisgender space, and gender inclusive terminology and gender neutral accommodations in rehearsal spaces are just the beginning for the expansion of safer art-making environments for trans theatre practitioners.
K. Woodzick | Theatre Topics, 2020 | Article
"A Nonbinary Actor Prepares (for Battle)"
A meditative and thorough call-to-action and firsthand account of a nonbinary actor encountering the structures of the binarized theatre world in our present moment! K. Woodzick offers an overview of practices and resources for nonbinary actors traversing the scene. I recommend reading this piece after watching the videos and reading the guides provided by the Gender Explosion Initiative above!
About TEDx
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This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxTufts, an independent event. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.
Read more about TEDx.Support The Theater Offensive, True Colors OUT Youth Theater — an out-of-school, community-based theater program to train LGBTQ+ youth leaders.