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Towards a Trans Canon
When you hire people to be themselves, bring their own lived experiences, and represent their communities, additional care is required.
In summer 2019, Emma led a two week workshop lab with a group of trans and cis performers exploring the potential and presence of trans stories in the Western classical canon. The lab took place at the Stratford Festival, Ontario.
Link to Howlround Article here: https://howlround.com/toward-trans-canon
As we neared the end of our time together, the core group wanted to do something to recognize that, although these moments of “lab” and “workshop” can be helpful and exciting, we are ready and eager to now take our bodies and our stories and our practice onto mainstream stages and into rehearsal rooms. We do not need further workshops to investigate if trans lives are worthy of performing; to “explore” how to reassure cisgender audiences that our presence will not destabilize their world. Our presence should change things. It must.
We collectively wrote a guidance document (available as a downloadable PDF), which can be used when employing or working with trans people, and which also should be considered when a company is contemplating working on a story that represents trans narratives.
We wrote it specifically with theatre companies in mind, contemplating some of the specific issues that actors encounter in the mainstream theatre industry. We kept to the forefront of the document an awareness of the specific factors that impact trans people who are Indigenous, Black, or people of color and the extra steps that are required to support them.
Oftentimes the theatre industry does not work in a healthy way and actors often have the least input in a production hierarchy. We propose that a move towards a trans canon and towards decolonizing theatre must also move away from these damaging hierarchies. But we also recognize that in the shorter term, trans actors are likely to be hired under existing structures and expected to fit seamlessly into existing ways of working. This is unlikely to work.
Two-Spirit, trans, and gender variant people have been kept out of the Western performance industry and theatre culture for too many generations now and, if we are to move towards a body of work that one day could be considered a canon, it is necessary now to employ, celebrate, and center Two-Spirit and trans actors, directors, writers, and artists.
The following guidance document is a starting place for how theatres could begin to do this, now, today.
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This document was compiled by Cole Alvis (they/them), Samson Bonkeabantu Brown (he/him), Rhiannon Collett (they/them), Emma Frankland (she/her), Cassandra James (she/her), Beric Manywounds (they/them), and Subira Wahogo (they/them) during a Lab investigation called Toward a Trans Canon, which took place at the Stratford Festival of Canada in August 2019.
The Gender Roadshow
Through performances, workshops and conversation The Gender Roadshow was a project that celebrated trans, non-binary and genderfluid identities, with Emma’s ‘euphoric’ Rituals for Change performed each night at East Street Arts.
This performance was preceded daily by daytime talks at Wharf Chambers and post show events at Live Art Bistro completing a programme of dynamic and engaging activities to elevate the discussion around trans identity.
Supported by the Wellcome Trust
TDoR Sao Paolo
This is an edited speech I gave several years ago at a Trans Day of Remembrance ceremony in Sao Paolo where I had been invited to hold a ritual space.
Some local trans people spoke - beautifully - about their lost friends and about the intersection between Black persecution and trans persecution (in Brazil Nov 20th is also Black Awareness Day) and then we collectively read the names and wrote them in chalk across the building.
“TDoR is about reflecting on the past 12 months and of recognising with love our trans siblings who have been murdered for being themselves. Reflecting on the vulnerability of trans bodies, particularly acknowledging the vulnerability of femme trans bodies and of Black and Brown trans bodies.
A note on the names every year.
You will see lists of names of some of the people who have been murdered in the last 12 months for being or being thought to be transgender.
The names we remember today have been compiled by various agencies on the internet and exist in various forms. I am grateful to the people who do the work of ensuring these deaths are noticed, because it is important that we notice them. Especially because disproportionately the people we remember today were often marginalised or excluded by society - so noticing them is important.
Often their exact method of death is also cited, but we have removed this. I'd like to explain why.
These murders were mostly committed by cisgender men.
The violent methods used are shocking and unreal.
Shocking and unreal.
But if we attach forever these names to the methods of their death then we are defining these people not by their beautiful selves, but by the violence imposed on them at the time of their death. We are defining them by the violence imposed on them by cisgender men. And we should not wish to do that.
We remember their names. And where we do not have names (many countries do not register these statistics) we acknowledge a person's existence with a pause and silence.
Continues in comments: Image of Emma and @renatacarvalhoteatro taken by @dani_villar_ at @ssexbbo
Voiceover Project
VoiceOver is a closed network of ‘radio boxes’ distributed to a small community of people that enables them to communicate with each other and share experiences.
VoiceOver is a hyperlocal social radio network built on 3g or 4g network that everyone in a community can listen in on and contribute to. By enabling participants to connect to, discover and engage with their communities, VoiceOver reduces loneliness and social isolation and reimagines what a 21st century community radio could be. It combines a state-of-the-art technology with a user-friendly, accessible and familiar object.
The tool is similar to a normal radio - a companion that is always there - broadcasting the voices of the neighbourhood, local news, event updates or general community chit-chat. But unlike normal radios, the members themselves respond to each others’ messages, and eventually even can create their own radio programme for their community.
Over four weeks in summer of 2018, artist Emma Frankland invited twenty-five members of Brighton’s trans (including non binary) community to archive their thoughts and feelings using VoiceOver radio boxes.
Commissioned by Brighton Digital Festival, we were invited to work with over four weeks in summer of 2018 with local artist Emma Frankland. She invited twenty-five members of Brighton’s trans (including
Each week Emma would send some provocations or questions – Who are you? What is community? What would you say to your younger self? And once a week they would listen to a specially recorded broadcast, made by a trans artist. These broadcasts themselves served as prompts on the themes of pride, love and existing outside our front door; on trans history; on the nature of community and on what it is to be a young trans person.
VoiceOver Brighton demonstrated one of Brighton Digital Festival’s core beliefs, which is that technology can, in the right hands, provide spaces for marginalised and precarious communities to make their voices heard.
— Laurence Hill, Director, Brighton Digital Festival
The participants were asked to share words and music that they would like to be heard by other trans identified people and also to share words for the world to hear. Whenever anyone at home recorded something on their radio box, a banner embedded with LED lights located outside the Marlborough Pub & Theatre responded in real-time by displaying their chosen colour. As participation grew, the banner filled with coloured lights – symbolising all their growing contributions. Each colour in the banner represents a specific participant. Over four weeks, 374 pieces of audio content were generated.
The content was featured in a solo exhibition at Brighton Pop Up Gallery from 28th September to 13th October. Two audio pieces were created from the recordings by Emma and her collaborator, Juan Carlos Otero. One is an audio landscape which is for members of the public to hear. Another one for anyone who identify themselves as trans (including non binary).
VoiceOver Brighton is a project by Umbrellium in collaboration with Emma Frankland. Commissioned by Brighton Digital Festival.
