Tranny Roadshow: laughs and learning about defying gender norms
Megan Feil
Issue date: 4/4/08 Section: Features
With many unique performances including an anecdote about a child's surprise encounter with rabbit guts, a reflective piece on incorporating and rejecting different versions of masculinity, a penis monologue, a story about lion costumes and marriage, an acoustic guitar performance, and an underground garage rock music act, the Tranny Roadshow celebrated gender variance on March 29 in Dana Auditorium.
The show reunited during their year-long break from touring specifically to present their "multimedia performance art extravaganza." Artists who self-identify as transgender combined their intrapersonal knowledge and talent for humor to stir distinctly pronounced laughs, pockets of chuckles, and several bouts of clapping from the audience.
Guilford welcomed them to a stage where expressing individuality - something that can either transcend and/or mingle with gender - is not shunned.
Performing her spoken word piece, one performer, Ryka Aoki, admits to ultimately loving her penis as a part of herself. However, sometimes she wishes it were easier to wear that "cute Hello Kitty bikini from Hot Topic."
"Don't think of it as cutting off, think of it as rearranging or turning around," she said, explaining the idea of a sex change to her penis. "It's something we're going to go through together. Whatever we decide to do will be for us."
Another act exemplified a universal idea: people can decide which aspects of any gender to attribute to their identity.
Playing a recording that tracked the tone drop in his voice over two and a half years at various intervals of male hormone injections, Kelly Shortandqueer, co-organizer of the Tranny Roadshow, shared part of his transformation with the audience.
He struggles with seeing "most versions of masculinity as slightly ridiculous" and concurrently feels that "female socialization has a monopoly on (his) insides."
"I have to decide what I want to incorporate and what I want to let go of," he said.
The show reunited during their year-long break from touring specifically to present their "multimedia performance art extravaganza." Artists who self-identify as transgender combined their intrapersonal knowledge and talent for humor to stir distinctly pronounced laughs, pockets of chuckles, and several bouts of clapping from the audience.
Guilford welcomed them to a stage where expressing individuality - something that can either transcend and/or mingle with gender - is not shunned.
Performing her spoken word piece, one performer, Ryka Aoki, admits to ultimately loving her penis as a part of herself. However, sometimes she wishes it were easier to wear that "cute Hello Kitty bikini from Hot Topic."
"Don't think of it as cutting off, think of it as rearranging or turning around," she said, explaining the idea of a sex change to her penis. "It's something we're going to go through together. Whatever we decide to do will be for us."
Another act exemplified a universal idea: people can decide which aspects of any gender to attribute to their identity.
Playing a recording that tracked the tone drop in his voice over two and a half years at various intervals of male hormone injections, Kelly Shortandqueer, co-organizer of the Tranny Roadshow, shared part of his transformation with the audience.
He struggles with seeing "most versions of masculinity as slightly ridiculous" and concurrently feels that "female socialization has a monopoly on (his) insides."
"I have to decide what I want to incorporate and what I want to let go of," he said.
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