MDLSX – Motus Production
Who does not know a gender-fluid artist and superstar Andy Warhol’s cinematography who oscillated between female and male? The glamour and theatricality of the pictures that conceals the hardships of a drag queen in history: something painted back in a day. And how is that to have enough kindness to do not make the project too exploitative. In the theatre this is easy and there are many exploitations. Acclaimed international artist Silvia Calderoni was the last transgender revolutionary performance in the theatre, exploring gender and androgyny. MDLSX directed by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela Nicolo, www.motusonline.com/en/mdlsx/ at the Romanian European Theatre Festival Eurothalia 2017 www.eurothalia.ro stays in my mind as an explosive, psychedelic, and a solitary hymn to gender b(l)ending in theatre, without any borders. A blonde punk androgenic chick, Silvia Calderoni uses her family’s home videos to blur fiction and break down cliche of her own life story as a gender searching person in modern Italy, which is yet and still very catholic country. This is part performance art monologue, within the non-stop DJ sections on the stages, with sets of music of The Smiths, Vampire Weekend, R.E.M. in the combination with Smashing Pumpinks provocative, rather demanding, physical performance that explains a lot about a confronting personal story of violence, confusion, and non-acceptance of the male dominating, catholic, society. The show is an exhilarating, a high-class entertainment,
a scandalous theatrical designed to challenge preconceptions and blow minds.
An Italian Modus Theatre Production features a performer that acts as onstage D.J., camera operator and quick-change costumer and a star on the stage, that mixes autobiography, academic discourse, a jukebox of cult rock numbers, along with descriptions of life as a hermaphrodite from Jeffrey Eugenides’s celebrated novel Middlesex (2002) They used mise-en-scène Silvia’s home movies and a recording of an interview with the gender theorist Paul.B.Preciado.
MDLSX Motus Production
This is true, the bravest gender theme discussed on the theatre stage, in my last 20 years of a theatre review. Modus’ MDLSX opened LaMama Theatre 2016 in New York. This was truly the most engaging dialogue done by Silvia Calderoni, male or female: the answers to certain questions, very much the point of “MDLSX” gender questioning theatre production. When trans people take the stage it seems that all the good and the bad comes under our experiences of performance. But if we talk about performativity, and fantasy together, it is something so powerful if it is done well. Well, I am thinking of Andy Warhol and his paintings, not just Silvia on the stage. The most extraordinary thing is that some performers have the power to take the audience along to a trip to neverland fantasy, withing the hardship of trans-gender people via amazing power shifts. Empathy shifts in that combination of experiences, and then we have the chance to share it as it is and maybe too complicated to understand. For a true artist, theatre is always a magical space and he or she is there, a human being, not a society freak, with precious and powerful energy exchange that is the most precious here.
The protagonist’s gender identity shouldn’t or can not be ignored, a good “trans” stories are just “human” stories when it comes to an oversimplification of the issue with the audience. There is something deep in the history of gender outsiders. But if the history is one of private performance: the Mollies of 18th century Europe – a unique gendered categorization of the time – performed secret staged rituals or odd mirroring: Victorian music halls, with drag comedy acts and principal boys, the first home to cross-dressing in history. How we present ourselves is accepted as truth in the dark of a theatre but derided as trickery in the light of everyday experience. The audience wants to know what’s underneath and who we are under the costume that we need to eventually remove.