Staging Activism: New York City Performing Artists as Cultural Workers by Amy Jo Goddard, MA Performance art is a unique interdisciplinary

cultural hybrid, often composed of theatre, politics, and spoken word. It smashes many of the conventions of traditional theatre and as a vehicle for selfexpression, serves as artist studio for the performer, and all of the actors in the room. An evening of performance art or theatre can be a product created by every member of the audience in tandem with the performer who breaks the fourth wall, or the accepted barrier between the actors onstage and the audience. The ritual breaking of the fourth wall in order to address the audience directly is generally attributed to Bertoldt Brechts development of epic theatre; however, Brechts exploration of this method was based on his research of the alienation effect in Chinese Theatre (Brecht, 1957/1964, p. 136; Brockett, 1991, p. 523). New York City serves as a nucleus for a plethora of artists and performers, many who self-produce their own work in downtown theatres, small performance spaces, bars and alternative arts spaces where they can create the work they envision without worry of censorship or other outside pressures that could influence the content of their shows. This places the downtown Manhattan performer in a

different class of artistapart from the popular Broadway culture that manufactures big ticket price plays and musicals for mainstream consumers in glamorous midtown theatres and operates with a different set of rules. The performers who make it downtown, meaning they have a sense of success in drawing large or sold-out audiences, and they often travel and take their work on the road to reach broader audiences, are in a unique position. They are able to speak in their authentic voices and to draw audience members to their performances precisely because of who they are and how their own lived identities contribute to the perspective of their work. Audiences comprised of social activists, gender and sexual minorities, outsiders, and people with low or fixed income are naturally drawn to work that reflects their world, one apart from the typical upwardly mobile status quo that much mainstream performing arts programs and theatre highlight. In New York City, alternative spaces that honor the artists who depict this other world abound in performance spaces such as The Kitchen, La Mama, WOW (Womens One World) Caf Theatre, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, PS 122, Performance Space 1, Dixon Place, Here Arts Center, Galapagos, Theater for the New City, The Point in the Bronx and Carlitos Caf in East Harlem. These are spaces where audiences can anticipate thought-provoking artistic work that often challenges established theatre normatives. Greenwich Village, located in lower Manhattan, has been the locus of New Yorks gay community as well as

the citys artistic hub for decades. As gentrification pushes many artists further out of the city, even the East Village, once seen as an affordable downtown area, is becoming densely populated with sheik neon boutiques and upscale restaurants. Many of the Villages alternative arts spaces struggle to keep their leases, or to buy their buildings in order to keep their doors open and ticket prices low. In spite of all these challenges, savvy New Yorkers know the East Village is still a place to see compelling performance. It is in this context that I will consider the following questions: What is the power of performance to create social change? What is the role of the artist who works for social change? How do artists define themselves as cultural workers? Methodology I conducted face-to-face, 60-90 minute, in-depth interviews about art and social change with Imani Henry, Susana Cook and Diyaa MilDred Gerestant, who are three New York City performing artists and writers. Each artist is nationally or internationally known for their distinct artistic style in creating work that is seen as a catalyst for social change. As artists with varying levels of outsider status, meaning that they see themselves as outside of the American mainstream, their perspectives on dominant culture and the current state of affairs are key to understanding oppression, power, sexuality and political structures where dominant privilege may be taken for granted. Additionally, all of them are educated, accomplished mid-career artists, and people of color

who identify as queer1 or lesbian. They frequently comment on gender, sexuality, race, identity and politics in their work, and sometimes use these issues as their overt subject matter. These interviews explored issues relating to art and social change starting with the following questions and expanding into territory organically produced in the interview process: How do these artists utilize their performance to encourage, inspire, or incite activism for social change? How have they seen the effects of their performance manifest in members of their audience or in communities where they have shown their work; and, is this activism? How does economic status limit opportunities for both performers and the intended audience and is institutional support important for artists? Why are sexuality, nationality, gender, class and race important subject matter and what is the intersection between the working class, racial and ethnic minorities, the gay and lesbian, and queer communities? Additionally, I draw upon my own experiences as a performance artist within this context. As a New York City performance artist, sexuality educator and activist, I have had access to a wide array of other artists and activists. In the midnineties, I became part of the WOW Caf Theatre Collective, the oldest womens theatre in the world, a downtown hotbet for womens theatre and performance. Largely supporting the work of lesbian and queer
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women, WOW was and is still a space where women can produce their own shows in exchange for their creativity, expertise and energy on other productions, a structure that creates a valuable artistic community. WOW has since changed its mission to support the work of trans people in addition to women, and is the site where I grew to know each of the performers interviewed for this article. In 1999, Susana Cook was an active member of WOW and had produced and directed shows regularly at the theatre with ensemble casts of mostly people of color. She asked three performers whom she had not worked with before to be a part of a second run of the highly successful Hot TamaleDiyaa MilDred Gerestant, Imani Henry and myself. I had known Gerestant previously as Dred, the preeminent drag king in New York City, a regular at Club Casanova (the first weekly drag king performance night in the country). As one of the kings who had inspired me to perform male drag myself, I had invited her to perform at numerous fundraisers and cabarets formerly, and she was highly regarded as a performer. Imani Henry, an actor from Boston who, in the midst of his own gender transition, had just relocated to New York, was eager to get involved with New Yorks downtown theatre scene. Henry went on to earn a residency with Brooklyn Arts Exchange where he created two shows, including B4T, for which I was part of his circle of collaborators. I have been consistently inspired by each of these artists and

continue to admire and support their work. Out of that came my own desire to speak with each of them about their perspectives on their own work, how they think it functions as activism and its place in the downtown queer performance community of New York City. Each of them elucidates their own mulitiplicitous identities in their work, exploring and giving voice to racial, national, class, gender, and sexual identities that are not the dominant norm in the U.S. The intersections of those multiple identities makes each of their bodies of work unique and yet, simultaneously allow their audience members to see images of themselves that rarely get front and center stage. Consider this article an invitation to acquaint yourself with three artists who have provoked my thinking and who may in turn challenge you in positive ways, should you choose to explore their work. Imani Henry There needs to be a clear understanding that we are cultural workersthis is our work and there needs to be health benefits. As an artist, this is ones work. The starving artist thing is so capitalist, so unbelievably damaging and disrespectful because then it becomes a situation where we need patrons of support. Imani Henry, a self-defined Caribbean, female-to-male, transsexual activist, writer and performer is working on learning to claim his identity as a cultural worker as he promotes himself formally, knowing the

importance of identifying his work as a meaningful contribution to society. Cultural worker has been used broadly to refer to people who work in museums, government-funded arts institutions or other cultural organizations, (CITE: use of cultural worker) In this article, cultural worker refers to the actual creators of art, and of people like writers, activists and performers who are the translators of current events for the public. As a preachers child, Henry was inspired at a young age when a woman read a poem in church, an act he saw as bold and not culturally appropriate. It was the first time he connected that art could be used effectively in everyday life. He studied theatre and performed at church and in school plays throughout his primary and secondary education. Henry has written and produced three full-length plays, has been a slam poet champion and is often featured as a performance poet or speaker at political rallies and events. His work as a political activist and his work as a performer are intrinsically connected. He says, Art is activism under capitalism in general. Everything is a form of resistance. Henry brings his work as an activist into his plays, and, in two of them, features a demonstration. He brings his multiple personal identities into his work on every level, and says, All of those identities mean something to me. To represent it is a big deal. When asked about the importance of visibility for identities that fall outside of the dominant norm, he says, Visibility is everything.

A woman looking like a man looking for a woman who likes women who look like men. Now, aint that some shit? You ask me what it is to be Black, Butch and Lesbian. Words, names, I have never claimed for myself. It was given and now I can only remember before there was words, before there were names, before I could, would, say it out loud I am only telling you because it needs to be said. I am only saying it because it lays too heavy, cuts too deep, runs like water bursting from a dam (Henry, 2002). When he first came to New York in 1999, Henry was beginning his gender transition as an activist within the anti-war and Millions for Mumia movements. Millions for Mumia developed to support Mumia AbuJamal, a journalist accused of killing a police officer in Philadelphia in 1981, who has served 22 years as a political prisoner and is on death row. Henry, a leader in this movement says, People have gone through that transition process with me inside of a larger political movement. I look different. People respected my pronoun changes. He laments the assumption that people of color are more homophobic or transphobic and has seen transformation of homophobia or transphobia on a personal level within these movements where people have been able to

see him as a brother in the struggle. One of his great achievements was spearheading Rainbow Flags for Mumia and connecting the struggles of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer (l/g/b/t/q) community with that of political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal. He worked to build solidarity between these two movements and has been instrumental in the large l/g/b/t/q turnout for Mumia demonstrations and events. At A Day for Mumia at Madison Square Garden in 1999 for which he was stage manager, the Rainbow Flags for Mumia section sold out within days. Indeed within a larger movement of people working for change in a public way, there is another level of change that happens amongst activists on an interpersonal level. At an anti-racism or anti-police brutality demo, as people make the connection that queer people are fighting for the same issues they are, they are forced to think about how issues of racial, gender and sexual justice are connected. Research has shown that one of the ways homophobia is healed is by knowing someone personally who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual. According to Poynter and Talbot (2006), Personal contact is a significant event in the development as an ally to GLB people (p. 276). Human connection in the context of activism brings real life to what might have previously functioned as disembodied bias. Henry speaks passionately on this issue, Social justice and change happens by the living breathing

struggle. You cant learn it in a book. Solidarity is what happens in the streetsyou have to work with people. You can do trainings, but what is it to go to an anti-police brutality demonstration? What is it to stand in solidarity with a family whose house has been firebombed by the clan? You cant learn solidarity any other way. Likewise in his theatre performances, whether his audience attributes the stories he tells to him personally, they experience an intimacy with him on stage and that human connection functions as a healing force. Henry creates fictional characters or characters based on real people, and sometimes weaves his own stories into the fibers of his work. For some of us, to transition, to transform, we gotta leave our lives behind. We just cant go back. We dont want to go back. Because where you end up is far more important (Henry, 2002). Henry conscientiously breaks the fourth wall in his performances, exploiting the intimacy of theatre and wanting to touch his audience to the point where he actually makes the audience part of his pieces. In his first play, B4T, he stationed his co-actor in the audience, and in his second show, The Strong Go Crazy, he created a living room out of the theatre and had a TV party where the audience was encouraged to talk back to the television with him in a group cultural critique, which resulted in lines being added to his script that came directly from

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audience members. After hed welcomed everybody and passed out popcorn, he would stand outside of the theatre listening and people are talking and making their own jokes or comments and just being together. And I love it. People who didnt know each other, came for a night of theatre, and theyre just laughing with each other. I thought it was brilliant. Beyond what Ive ever seen in theatre. People organically became connected to each other and became part of the show. In college, Henry would get recruited to play thugs, prostitutes and other stereotypical roles and predicted that as a black person there would not be many roles for him on stage. So he began learning other roles like stage managing and directing to ensure possibilities in theatre. He has lost acting roles because of his identities, citing an example of being called in to play a stereotypical sexist, ultra-macho black man, where he began to play the role as soon as he walked through the door to audition; but as soon as he was found out to be trans, he was fired. He knew he had to create his own work to make a place for himself as an actor. Henry is a sought after performer on U.S. college campuses and has seen his work affect thousands of students and university communities in many ways. He often has to remind academic audiences that its okay to laugh because they think they are at a piano recital. His work functions as activism in so many ways, reaching students who

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would never come to see his show if it werent for the extra credit their professor offers, or propelling the straight white college student to write a paper about race and identity after seeing his show for a class, or even the way that various student groups are forced to build coalitions with each other in order to raise the money to bring Henry to their campus. Many of his audiences are straight and white, people from very different backgrounds. The possibility is there to affect people who are actively engaged, as they have committed an hour or more of their time to listen to what this artist has to say. This becomes a fertile ground for social change through artistic means in a way that wouldnt happen otherwise. These audience members are not necessarily the people who will attend the march for l/g/b/t/q equality or the demonstration against violence towards young people of color, but they will come see a play. If art is political, it discusses issues meant to be silent. When we create art thats political in any shape or form or when we as oppressed peoples stand up and talk about our truth or experience--if a woman talks about what its like to be sexually assaulted or abused, thats political. Capitalism would say be silent, dont talk about that. Susana Cook I am your Hot Tamale baby. Come sweet seorita you know you can't resist our full lips and curvaceous bodies

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Let's run for the border mamita Do you want to know what I eat where I live and what music I listen to Do you want to know about Frida Kahlo Che Guevara Evita Peron Tango Malambo Guacamole I am not talking about Public Transportation They say that it is the final triumph of a system of domination when the dominated starts singing its virtues Let's dance colonizer I am for civilization and progress I am your colonized stereotype of the Latino-macho-catholic fatalism I am an insatiable sex machine........... Market me baby I love you my democratic enlightened post-modern one on the basis of this confrontation with this exotic other I am your significant other..... Do you want to know what I signify? Do you want to taste my exotic Passion.... with beans.... Chew my uncivilized, primitive, barbarian second class identity, while I drink your bold superior fully shaped identity of the one I am a hungry dog, I am your Chihuahua I am enjoying this hierarchical exchange of emotional capital Give me baby I am building my national identity Let's walk half naked under the sun eating tortilla and mango

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I was recently brought into civilization I could never fully overcome the fact of carrying primitiveness in my blood I arrived late to the capitalist fiesta...... but I run I am your Speedy Gonzales baby I am your bandit.......... your papi chulo Sit back look pretty and let the immigrant do the work (Cook, 1999) In this classic Susana Cook opening monologue, all of the Argentinean, butch lesbian, New York City performing artists signature elements are there: breaking the fourth wall to seduce the audience through clever poetics, using shameless humor that forces the audience into an uncomfortable place of self-reflection, pointedly poking fun at U.S. establishment and the privileged class, and bringing her multiplicitous identities front and center stage. There are other elements one can always expect from a Susana Cook performance, including unabashed butches and femmes, quick-fire dialogue with her ensemble cast made up of people of color and lesbians, music scored by her son Julian, and at least one tongue and cheek choreography. Cooks shows are community in their making, and a dynamic, if not at times disjointed cultural experience for the performers and audience members. Cook has been performing in the New York City downtown performing arts scene since 1991 and continues to write and direct all of her own work as one of the most prolific and bold artists to grace many

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a downtown stage. Cook was recruited at age 16 into a theatre group run by political Jewish artists in Argentina by her high school friend who had just returned from an Israeli Kibbutz. It was the same year the Argentinean dictatorship began, before the internet, and the Madres of Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of People who were Missing) started what became a huge movement in Buenos Aires, greatly impacting Cook. The government was abducting people and as the mothers of the disappeared were searching for their sons and daughters in hospitals, jails, police stations and morgues, they found each other and started what became a movement. Somehow my theatre and activism came together out of this, says Cook. When I interviewed her in her quirky house in the Bronx, she showed me large, framed pictures of the Madres on her walls, speaking with effusive pride about their work and their continued impact on her. Cook is astutely aware of the importance of having images that represent her, images with which she, and others like her, can relate. This is a central political force in her work. I love preaching to the converted. The norm has a whole culture preaching to themevery magazine, movie, TV program is preaching to them and we have two, and [critics say] Oh, theyre preaching to the converted. Its not enough to convert, you also need to feel good about yourself. We all need a culture we can identify with, to help us reflect.

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As a teen, she did not know or see images of lesbians in Buenos Aires. When she came to New York City and discovered womens bookstores and the WOW Caf Theatre, her life experience and her own struggles with having to hide parts of herself were validated, knowing that there were other lesbians like her. Learning of the disproportionately high suicide rates of l/g/b/t youth, (Garofalo et al. 1998; DAugelli, A.R., Hershberger, S.L., & Pilkington, N.W., 2001) it became critical to place lesbian women and lesbian and butch identities as the epicenter of her work. Masculinity is not the monopoly of men, she says about her identity as a butch in a time when butches are being eclipsed in queer communities by various transgender and gender variant masculine identities, such as FTMs (female to male transsexuals), bois, and gender queers2. She adopted her butch identity and has watched many others come out as butches because of her work. They thought the associations or the stereotype of a butch was so negative, so bad. Its a whole thing with working class thats bad, like working class is imitating men. That they were working class or imitating men gave butches a bad rap. In her casts, she skillfully highlights the experiences of the working class, women of color and sexual minorities. Identifying herself as a Creator of Culture or Worker of Culture, she has produced 16 plays and sees her contribution as being one who likes to read and develop political analysis and cull it into

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something explored onstage through humor for people who dont like or have time to read newspapers. Given her subject matter, she often struggles with how to make it funny. She knows her cultural role as an artist, is one who will create culture that will support the values or counter-values that we think are important. Since the U.S. 2001 election debacle she has focused on making connections between the Argentinean Dictatorship and current U.S. politics. In The Values Horror Show she ends her trademark monologue with, I grew up during the dictatorship in Argentina for example, and now, I am sharing this one with you. I am not going to tell you the horrors we went through in Argentina, you have your own horrors to deal with. We are horror sisters and brothers. This is like a deja vu to me. But I am not going to tell you the end, I am not gonna ruin your movie (Cook, 2005). She is also exploring the use of nationalism and religion in the U.S. as political tools for promoting homophobia and the worship of the rich and of celebrities. Her most recent show, The Idiot King brings all of these issues together, mocking the stupid, vacuous king who kills in the name of religious nationalism, again connecting our current U.S. politics to Argentinas dictatorship. King - Hi God. Yes, I called you. I wanted to talk to you about the pearly gates, the walls of alabaster and the floors made of gold.

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Suddenly I realized that it might look pretty gay in heaven. Yes, of course is up to you the decoration. Yes, I want to go to heaven. I just had the disturbing thought of Saint Peter with a pearly key holder. I cant stop thinking about the pearly pearly gates (Cook, 2006) Susana Cook thinks there is no place for her in corporate America and no place for her on Broadway, Im a butch. I have an accent. I didnt have what they wanted. In order to maintain authenticity for herself and in her work, like Henry, she has created a space for herself. She has to think carefully about what she wants to expose to people and who and what she wants to make visible. Even if you dont want to be political, you are being political. If you are not saying anything then in a way you make a political choice of complying with the general discourse. The place where you choose to perform, the price of tickets, the people you put in your show, everything is a choice where you are showing something on stagethe winners, the losers, the minorities, this whole system is based on a certain set of values. Diyaa MilDred Gerestant I, Diyaa MilDred Gerestant, aka Drag King/Gender-Illusionist Dred, am a multi-spirited, Haitian-American, gender-illusioning, black, shaved, different, Goddess, anti-oppression, open, non-traditional, self-expressed, blessed, gender-bending, drag-kinging, fluid,

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ancestor-supported, and - after all that - non-labelling woman! (Gerestant, 2006) Gerestant Diyaa Gerestant thought she was an ugly duckling as a child. She describes her childhood self as shy, lonely, sad and as someone who had difficulty with self-expression. Like Henry, Gerestant grew up connected to the church and questioned the homophobic preachers who articulated hatred in their sermons as if it was Gods word. She found this inauthentic and her spiritual path has taken her to a very different but powerful spirituality that connects to her genders and her many identities. Performance is a spiritual tool. Everything I do is a spiritual tool...My performance has definitely helped me open up to my spirit. Her life transformation exemplifies the magnitude of transformation she expresses in her drag king performances. For many years, Gerestant stormed stages from New York to London to Rio in sophisticated male cross-dressing performances as Drag King Dred, dancing and lip-syncing (one of few performers who never made lip-sync dull) as she brought to life dynamic characters like Shaft or Superfly, and paid homage to Marvin Gaye, Grace Jones, P. Diddy and Busta Rhymes. She would shape-shift from one into another with onstage costume and prop changes that allow her audiences to be insiders in her transformational process. Over the last few years, those dynamic drag performances morphed into Gerestant taking the stage as herself to use her voice to

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talk about the story behind Dred, bringing her full-circle with a new confidence and ability to celebrate her multi-faceted gender. Every seven years our total make up changeswere always going through a rebirth and dont realize it. A lot of us are under a cloud or shadow of something keeping us from seeing who we really are. I can only share that from my own life experience because most of my life was like that, I went through a lot of abuse and teasing, I didnt have any kind of self worth. For awhile, Dred was someone I was hiding behind. Dred was my male character. I had to really look at that and face those demonslike I wasnt worthy of just being myself as MilDred. It is that spirit, that ability she has to speak from a truthful place that endears her to audiences around the world and has carried her message of self-love to thousands. Gerestant never thought she would be a performer until in 1995 she went to a drag king show at the Pyramid in the East Village, as the pulse of the New York City drag king scene was really starting to thump. She was mesmerized by the power of what she saw in the performances of soon-to-be notorious kings like Busta Hymen and Mo B. Dick. The drag kings gave me so much fierce energy. They were powerful, sexy, wonderfully creative women, and as I watched them I had a vision - all of a sudden I pictured myself up there doing the same thingSome friends told me I was too pretty to pull it off, but

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thank God I didn't listen to them. I always like how goatees and sideburns looked and said that if I was ever a man I would want that, so Busta came over one day and helped me put some on. --Diyaa MilDred Gerestant, Exposures of a Multi-Spirited, HaitianAmerican, Gender-Harmonizing WoMan (CITE) Gerestants first transformation into what would become Dred, was a precursor to the hundreds of women she would inspire in the same way over the next ten years, as expressed in her first play (2006), Looking in the mirror, I couldnt believe my transformation. I wondered, Where did that handsome man come from? I couldn't believe that I was looking at another side of me, that this side existed. Its still incredible each time I do it. Dreds signature style solidified over the years until she would perform a medley of song and characters, always finishing with Aretha Franklins Natural Woman as she stripped down from her final male drag costume into a sexy red bikini top and mini skirt full with a bulge, her facial hair still intact. At the pinnacle, she would reach into her underwear in a typical male gesture and reveal a shiny red apple which she would bite into, reflecting her power as a woman, referencing Eves transgression in the garden of Eden. She has been one of the most inspiring contemporary drag kings, claiming her own brand of masculinity a political flip of the stereotypical macho man into something powerful in a completely different way.

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When I first started performing, I kept saying that Drag King shows are political, which I guess is activismthe way I defined political at the time was anything thats not considered the norm. Anything that activates peoples minds, getting them to think differently. Calling herself a gender illusionist she has pushed peoples boundaries in over 20 countries and forced them to think about what they are attracted to and why, to stretch what they think they know and to sit with the unknown. One of the most well-known drag kings in the world, many people find themselves attracted to her and approach her after her shows. In the presence of a person with a womanly body and a goatee, the conflicted desire becomes complex on multiple levels. She will have a heterosexual man be attracted to her from the neck down struggling to rectify her hairy face, or men who think she is transitioning from a male to become a womanthat her facial hair is real and her breasts are implants. She wants to break down all of these illusions and get people to question what makes a man or a woman, and at the core, what is real? What happens when audience members are compelled to explore their feelings in that moment in relation to these questions? How does her humanity and joy in her whole self affect them in those intimate exchanges between audience and performer? Now able to more fully have Dred and Gerestant co-exist onstage, she uses storytelling, singing, and drag to speak her truths and inspire her audiences with her own transformation.

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The man or the yang in me, really empowered the woman, the yin. The male in me broadened and empowered the woman I was born as and integrated all that I amThats where true wholeness, Im realizing, comes in, and accepting all of who you are. In her first full-length play, she tells the story of competing in a Superfly Look Alike Competition sponsored by a mainstream hip-hop and R&B radio station in New York City. She took second place, at which point she, in wanting to express the full scope of her act, took the microphone, and in her feminine voice told the audience she was a woman who performs as a drag king, at which point the audience of 1500 became silent. For an audience she describes as nowhere near queer, this jolt calls many assumptions into question and positions her smack in the middle of a bold activist move. Gerestant believes all of what we do is performance, all of it is drag in one form or another. When discussing social change through performance, for Gerestant, it is summed up in one idea: acceptance. From all different cultures where Ive been asked to perform, whether its Germany, or Korea, or Croatia, Australiathe one thing everyone really got was wanting to be accepted for who they areI think thats the base of everything whether its dealing with race, religion, sexuality, spirituality, gender, whatever it is, people just want to be who they areAll cultures get that.

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Discussion For Henry and Cook, the activist/performer nexus is built into their role as cultural worker or creators of culture through their performances, where their ethnic, gender and sexual identities and conversations about them are invoked. For Gerestant, her strength is in her exploration of her gender before an audience, playing the gender illusionist, challenging audiences in their belief systems and what they consider the known and understood. So to be a cultural worker is to create elements of culture. If the elements of culture include beliefs, values, customs, means of communication and artifacts, then the work that Cook, Henry and Gerestant are doing on and off the stage would certainly be part of cultural work. Henry writes for Workers World Newspaper and organizes protests and other community events; Cook teaches theatre and dreams of creating a School for the Revolution; and Gerestant plans to open an alternative healing center and teaches drag king workshops around the world. All of these acts are creations of culture, including exploring and expanding belief systems, creating literary texts, creating art, culling current events into critical analysis, encouraging critical thought and dialogue, and expanding communities around common values, and not to mention, having fun. The artist/activist is a cultural worker and the work domain of culture cannot be monopolized by privileged persons working in arts-based institutions or in organizations supported by

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governmental bodies. Additionally, Brian Wallis (YEAR) defines cultural activism as the use of cultural means to try to effect social change, (p. ??). The independent artist who connects and explores issues, inviting involvement from an audience and creating community around the production and implementation of theatre is in every way a cultural worker and a cultural activist. Clearly, even as identities are augmented over time, expressing the needs, positions, and peculiarities of multiple identities are important to each of these artists. Since claiming identities makes it possible to create communities around common experience, the importance of identity is intrinsic for the creation of community for these artists. When it comes to queer, the story is complex. While Henry is comfortable in the identity of queer, and Gerestant claims queer while simultaneously rejecting labels for herself, Cook has trouble with the umbrella term. Queer erases discreet identities that fall under it and, for her, is problematic. She says, I think that the problem with queer is it erases our identities, because its different to be lesbian than to be a gay man. Its important because I am a feminist, and I believe in womens struggle. You are erasing a whole identity. Queer comes from inclusion of transstaying away from the binary, and its great and its a very important struggle for the trans community. But for womens community it has to do with the social reality for women

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Im not saying that its easier for a trans person than it is for a woman, but sometimes things get upside down when its an FTM for example who lives as a man and starts to get male privilege and then women are supposed to be the oppressors because they are part of the traditional women/men category, but they are struggling with what it is like to be a woman, or a lesbian in this society. It has a double edge. Inclusion is good. If Queer community is an umbrella, we have the right to keep existing within it as lesbians/dykes. Queer as part of the terrain of constantly evolving identities will likely continue shifting in meaning and usage. As new connotations and labels inform the queer diaspora, gender and queer theories and politics evolve. Each of these artists have made specific choices that support being able to live as an artist. Cook maintains a dog walking business in order to give herself the freedom to create her schedule and make her work. She continues to desire her productions be supported in downtown theatres where ticket prices can be kept low and priced on a sliding scale so that broader audiences can access her work. She is dismayed as she watches respected downtown spaces like PS 122 bring in artists from Australia and Europe, a trend she sees as eclipsing possibilities for New York artists. Henry holds multiple jobs at any one time that give him flexibility to shift his schedule to make room for a production.

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Gerestant teaches yoga and is a healing practitioner, again, jobs that can afford her the adjustability she needs to create her artistic work and tour as opportunities arise. Each of these artists spoke eloquently about the relationship of economic class to creating and producing performance. Both Gerestant and Cook discussed having done their work for next to nothing, and claim that this is possible, with desire. As a multi-media artist, Henry suggests it impossible to produce a play without money. Henry and Cook understand that everyone does not have the same access to resources in order to create a show. Henry cites the example of a single working mother who lacks the luxury of time to go to auditions or to spend making her own work. Henry resents the idea of making art for arts sake, claiming this as a classist approach, since so many people do not have the time and support to just make art. Since both Cook and Henry have been kept out of theatre because there were often no suitable roles for them, they knew they had to create roles, which requires time and money. All agree that institutional support is needed and who gets institutional support is another question of access and privilege. Is it possible to turn an audience into a political movement? As an example, Eve Ensler began performing The Vagina Monologues at the Here Arts Center with a $15 ticket price in the mid-90s and she has not only made vagina a word not feared but celebrated the world over through her performance, using her work as a call to action, she has

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turned the energy of her audiences and responses to her work into a global movement to end violence against women. But how would that have looked if Ensler had been a woman of color? What if she was an out lesbian, or a person of transgender experience? Would the same support have come her way? Could Henry, Cook and Gerestant build a movement in the same way if they wanted to? The overlapping tactics of these artists make their work participatory processes of audience engagement. Each of them have taken great risks in the work they have created and in the ways they have exposed their own personal selves in order to dispense their messages; the use of metaphor is intrinsic to all three, while ironic humor is a cornerstone of Cooks work; and, they all revel in breaking the fourth wall as a way of involving the audience and letting audiences know themselves to be a constitutive part of a production. Henry, Cook and Gerestant see their performances functioning as activism on multiple levels and after analyzing their approaches, I can add to this discussion. Performance is by nature a political tool of visibility where the artisan has the power to make visible the people, stories and perspectives they wish to value and privilege above what may be traditionally privileged as the norm. Performance as a tool of visibility becomes a political tool, for many artists have learned that by exploiting media they get their messages out to greater number of people. Since the manipulation of language and the creation of images

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creates power, these artists are taking power and putting it in the hands of the under-represented and the disenfranchised. What does it mean for an audience to get to know a gender variant characters inner thoughts and struggles with how he/she does or does not fit into cultural norms? What does it mean to see lesbians of varying levels of gender expression kissing and discussing lesbian sex onstage, expressing the norms of their own community rarely seen in the mainstream? What does it mean to watch a handsome man win a contest and find out that he is a biological woman? And how does that shift the meaning of gender for a mainstream audience? Henry says that every single time he performs, he puts some sort of political literature on the seats in the theatre before his shows and talks afterwards about what people can do next, engaging the audience further. In a mobilization effort, he educates them about cases of injustice they may not be aware of. Cook and Gerestant also engage their audiences with question and answer periods following their performances so that the conversation and critical analysis of issues raised in their work can continue in dialogue with all of the actors in the room. These acts are ways of creating community and solidarity around issues and between peopleboth necessary for effective activism. Henry, Gerestant and Cook cite many instances of learning about the impact of their work on individuals and communities, from a young lesbian thanking Cook for validating her experience, to young women

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who get to explore their gender expression in Gerestants drag king workshops to the many instances Henry cites of connections made by students on college campuses to these issues and to one another. Gerestant brings it back to human connection, which is live performances strength over other non-live media. When you treat others as yourself, or when you realize we are all connected you wont want to bomb someone in Iraq, you wont want to abuse somebody, you wont want rape to be happening, you wont want somebody homeless on the street. Were all connected and to me thats the basis of social change Interviews with three critical New York City downtown performing artists reveal their commitment to utilizing the stage as a privileged space to speak to their audiences and to involve them. Since performance can create a context for new understanding, through the dynamic relationship of these performers to the audience members they touch through the fourth wall, they open the possibility for shifting consciousness, and encourage action. Global movement or not, what they are doing in New York and on their tours is meaningful and makes an important contribution to activist movements working towards social change.

Indicative of Henrys whole creative process, he invited a circle of collaborators to assist him in creating B4T while commissioned as an

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artist in residence at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange in 2002. There is fertile possibility for social movement, where, by creating an environment where people can connect, reflect and discuss issues, there grows an opportunity for social change, even if its the small microcosm of the audience gathered in the theatre or a group of people who are dissecting issues as they help an artist like Henry develop a show. people can respond to real stories and creativity in ways they may not to a speech or didactic redux of preach to the choir.

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Queer has been used derogatorily for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people and has, over the last decade, been adopted as an identity by many members of these communities as a way of deconstructing and dismantling its aspersive power. While queer does not necessarily mean gay, many gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual people, as well as heterosexuals whose sexuality does not fit into the cultural standard of monogamous heterosexual marriage have adopted the label "queer" as an act of resistance in that it falls outside of dominant sexual norms and expectations. Queer theory has been built around many of these ideas with resistance acting as a central component for queer identities (Hall, 2003; Wikholm, 1999).
2

As ideas about the multiplicity of gender identities continue to develop, individual

identities are expanding. Contemporary gender identities include FTMs (female to male transsexuals) and boisindividuals who may have been assigned a female gender identity at birth and socialized accordingly, but whose identity and gender expression become masculinized. Gender queer is a term some use in resistance to established gender norms, and as a way of challenging the traditional gender binary.

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References Brecht, B. (1992). Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. (J. Willett, Ed. & Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. (Original work published in 1957) Brockett, O. (1991). History of the theatre (Sixth ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Cook, S. (1999) Hot tamale. Retrieved on June 28, 2006 from http://susanacook.com/words2.htm#hot Cook, S. (2005). The values horror show. Unpublished play. Cook, S. (2006). The idiot king. Unpublished play. DAugelli, A.R., Hershberger, S.L., & Pilkington, N.W. (2001). Suicidality patterns and sexual orientation-related factors among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths. Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior, 31, 250-264. Fourth Wall. (n.d.). Retrieved July 20, 2006 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_wall Garofalo, R., Wolf, R.C., Kessel, S., Palfrey, J., & DuRant, R.H. (1998). The association between health risk behaviors and sexual orientation among a school based sample of adolescents. Pediatrics, 101, 895-902. Gerestant, M. (2006). Exposures of a multi-spirited, Haitian-American,

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gender-harmonizing woman. In Robin Bernstein (Ed.), Cast Out: Queer Lives in Theater (pp. ??) Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Hall, D. (Ed.). (2003). Queer Theories (Transitions). United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. Henry, I. (2002). B4T. Unpublished play. Henry, I. (2004). Living in the light. Unpublished play. Poynter, K. & Talbot, D (2006). Heterosexual allies in higher education: The development of a model. Retrieved from www.duke.edu/~kpoynter/HeterosexualAllies%20(Jan06).doc on July 5, 2006. Manuscript submitted for publication. Wikholm, A. (1999). Words: A glossary of the words unique to modern gay history. Retrieved April 29, 2005, from http://www.gayhistory.com/rev2/words/queer.htm.

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