I've always had an a$$-to-the-brain theory. When a player's a$$ gets put on the bench, a message goes straight to the brain saying, Get me off of here.
To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman.
There is no original or primary gender a drag imitates, but gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original.
When Andy Kaufman performed, he was not just trying to be funny. He was playing with the notion of what it means to try to be funny, of what it means to be an audience expecting somebody to be funny. He was doing a dance and playing a game.
When we say gender is performed, we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world.
In PhD, my topic was Stage Techniques in Sanskrit Drama - theory and practice. I wanted to combine my drama training with Sanskrit drama, which has a very rich history in literature.
Gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts.
We do what we can, and then make a theory to prove our performance the best.
I studied as an actor at the theatre conservatoire in Quebec, but by the time I got to my third year, I was more interested in directing. There's more to it than helping actors get round a stage: it's a wonderful way of telling stories.
Gender is not something that one is, it is something one does, an act… a doing rather than a being.
