Nicolas Shannon Savard: Welcome to Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, a collection produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. I’m your host, Nicolas Shannon Savard. My pronouns are they, them, and theirs. I’m thrilled to be returning to your podcast feed for the second season of this collection.

Earlier than I dive into the interview for this episode, I wish to give a short overview of what you may count on for this season, or from the collection, typically, in case you’re listening for the primary time. Gender Euphoria, the Podcast is an interview-based collection, which goals to amplify the voices of trans and gender nonconforming artists and discover the cultural work that trans-queer efficiency is doing in the USA. The primary season, featured conversations with trans and non-binary artists, together with Joshua Bastian Cole, Dillon Yruegas, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, Siri Gurudev, Jesse O’Rear, Possibly Burke, Rebecca Kling, D’Lo, and Scott Turner Scofield.

We talked about their work in and across the theatre and queer trans group. In that first season, I needed to construct a group—an archive—of conversations about trans efficiency in dialogue with the artists creating that work. Within the second season, I wish to decide up and weave collectively a few the key threads that got here out of these conversations and convey in additional artists whose work is in dialogue with these themes.

The thought I pitched to HowlRound again in October was a two-part collection. The primary half targeted on the theme “making house, claiming house,” exploring the intersections of community-building and social justice–oriented activism, in and thru efficiency by collectives, led by and centering trans and queer of coloration artists. Then the second half of the season would give attention to “queer intimacies.” Artists would discuss how their work explores relationships between characters, actors, audiences, our bodies from an intersectional queer-trans perspective, interrupting that cultural narrative of the lone trans character in any given story.

Then I began recording the interviews and I discovered the content material of our conversations wasn’t really easy to divide into these two clear classes. My preliminary questions, exploring queer-trans intimacies and multiplicity in trans narratives, couldn’t actually be thought-about with out taking into consideration the a lot broader social and political context we’re residing in.

By the American Civil Liberties Union’s rely as of this recording in Could, the 2023 legislative session has seen forty-five states introduce a complete of 490 payments limiting trans and gender-nonconforming and queer folks’s entry to healthcare, to training, and extra typically to public house. An all-time excessive of seventy-three of these payments have been signed into regulation. As trans and queer artists, we don’t have the posh to separate the non-public from the political or the relational in our cultural organizing and political activism.

A part of what I love in regards to the artists I’ve talked to is the way in which that they’re in a position to maintain each the non-public and political collectively, illuminating the connections, the tensions, and the messiness of making artwork and group within the face of hostility. So the conversations you’ll hear this season with playwrights, utilized theatre practitioners, advocates, activists, organizers, educators, intimacy administrators will discover each of the unique themes and the place they overlap. We’ll discover questions like, “What does claiming house as a transgender nonconforming artist appear like when your very existence is an ongoing authorized and cultural debate? What sort of help does it take to repeatedly present up?”

“How are transgender nonconforming queer artists making house for each other in a theatre trade that’s usually hostile to us? How would possibly that translate past the fourth wall?”

“How can and the way do these areas we create for and with one another operate as websites of solidarity throughout a number of marginalized teams?

“What can intimacy directing practices educate us about constructing extra queer and trans-affirming rehearsal rooms? And what are queer and trans artists bringing to the rising discipline of intimacy path?”

“What position does vulnerability play for visibly queer and trans artists in growing onstage intimacy in its many types?” And, “How do racialization, exoticization, and traditions knowledgeable by white supremacy and patriarchy complicate that course of?”

“How are we establishing intimate connections with reside audiences? How does that stage of intimacy between performer and viewers change throughout totally different areas, whether or not they be architectural, group, geographical, political? What sort of transformation would possibly that relationship constructing invite?”

For the primary episode of the season, I’d wish to return to a dialog I had with Jesse O’Rear. We recorded the interview again in January of 2022. Half of that dialog aired in season one, episode seven, titled “Trans Theatre and the Autobiographical Assumption.” To briefly reintroduce him, Dr. Jesse O’Rear is an artist, scholar, utilized theatre practitioner, and educator at the moment residing and dealing within the Dallas-Fort Price space. He holds a PhD in theatre from the College of Texas at Austin. His scholarly analysis focuses on reside efficiency work utilizing autobiographical materials by transgender artists.

On this a part of the interview, we discuss Jesse’s work in utilized theatre with LGBTQ college students on faculty campuses. One of many concepts that’s actually caught with me and has pushed me to maintain fascinated by the moments the place the structural and the intimately interpersonal collide is his articulation of a follow he calls “kinesthetic allyship.” Round that concept, we unpack a few of the tensions between the drive to develop performance-based bystander intervention and DEI trainings rooted in lived expertise, and asking college students who’re already marginalized on campuses to reenact moments the place they’ve skilled discrimination usually for, and even with, the identical group perpetuating that hurt.

Jesse describes some various fashions of facilitated embodied studying, which make house for LGBTQ college students to step into positions of management relatively than re-victimization and for viewers contributors to actively follow embodied modes of allyship. With none additional ado, right here is my dialog with Jesse O’Rear.

Rebecca Kling: Gender euphoria is:

Dillon Yruegas: Bliss.

Siri Gurudev: Freedom to expertise masculinity, femininity, and the whole lot in between.

Azure D. Osborne-Lee: Getting to indicate up—

Siri: with out every other thought however my very own pleasure—

Azure: as my full self.

Rebecca: Gender euphoria is opening the door to your physique and being residence.

Dillon: Unabashed bliss.

Joshua Bastian Cole: You may really feel it. You may really feel the aid.

Azure: Really feel secure.

Joshua: And the sense of validation—

Azure: celebrated—

Joshua: or actualization.

Azure: Or generally it means—

Rebecca: being assured in who you’re.

Azure: But additionally to see your self mirrored again.

Rebecca: Or possibly not, however being excited to search out out.

“Ally” is a verb. It’s an motion. You must really enact allyship, and also you don’t simply get to slap that label on your self after which simply be glad since you perceive one thing.

Nicolas: In my very own expertise, I’ve discovered type of in comparison with mainstream industrial levels, at the very least, there appear to be much more trans and gender-nonconforming of us gravitating towards utilized theatre, theatre for social change, social justice efficiency, that type of area of the efficiency world. That’s been true for myself. That was not what received me into the theatre, however what stored me there. So I’m questioning, may you speak slightly bit about the way you got here into the utilized theatre realm?

Jesse O’Rear: Initially, I’m so glad to be right here. I simply need to say that I’m very excited to be speaking with you in the present day.

Nicolas: Completely satisfied to have you ever right here!

Jesse: So my work on this space began actually critically after I was in graduate college. I used to be within the Efficiency as Public Observe program at UT Austin within the Division of Theatre and Dance. I did my grasp’s and my PhD by way of that program. They usually have a sister program known as Drama for Youth and Communities. And so there have been unbelievable instructors and professors in that division, that program, who had been performing some actually fantastic work on the college with workshops and facilitations round bystander intervention coaching for home violence and for campus local weather points.

And so by way of that program, by way of Dr. Megan Alrutz, I met Dr. Okay. A. Hogan, who was the training coordinator on the UT Austin Gender and Sexuality Middle. And Dr. Hogan was engaged on a program known as Friends for Pleasure, which is a peer-facilitation and training program that may be a two-semester course the place within the first semester the scholars examine queer idea and social justice strategies by way of each drama-based studying and likewise a social work lens. After which within the second semester the scholars develop an interactive workshop round problems with LGBTQ discrimination and oppression particularly on faculty campuses.

And so I had the chance to work with Dr. Hogan as a educating assistant for a yr on that program. It was such an extremely influential and thrilling kind of mind-expanding expertise to see the methods through which the practices of making efficiency, creating characters, diving into hypothetical fictional conditions was in a position to get college students to deeply perceive totally different situations.

And the actually cool factor about Friends for Pleasure is because it’s not housed within the Division of Theatre and Dance, the scholar inhabitants that engages with it encompasses so many various departments of the college. So it was a extremely interdisciplinary group of scholars. So by the tip of it, the scholars that we had getting up on stage or in entrance of school rooms and performing improvised scenes of battle, dialogue, and backbone, these college students got here from social work; they got here from the Faculty of Schooling. None of them had been theatre majors, and none of them actually had an expansive expertise with efficiency, however they had been up there doing a few of the most unbelievable convincing and life-changing efficiency work that I’ve ever seen.

So the mannequin that Friends for Pleasure makes use of, that I’m now utilizing in my work at Texas A&M is Michael Rohd’s Theatre for Group Battle and Dialogue.

The thought behind that being that you just don’t current audiences with conditions which have a clear-cut, Sure, no, that is the suitable factor, that is the incorrect factor. You current audiences with multifaceted, extremely advanced, real looking conditions of battle, and you then ask them to take part as performers alongside your facilitators to generate concepts for learn how to transfer the dialogue ahead. So we’re not coming right into a scenario and saving the day and fixing the issue. We’re not coming in turning unhealthy folks into good folks.

We’re coming in understanding that everyone is a human who’s going to make decisions. If you find yourself in a scenario of battle, that’s what you’ve gotten is you simply have decisions. So asking viewers members who’ve various levels of background and historical past, each in efficiency, but in addition in understanding the LGBTQ+ expertise, asking them to come back up and be susceptible with you and say, “Step into this second with us and see what it feels wish to be on this second and see what it feels wish to attempt to transfer by way of this second.”

I actually admire that mannequin of acknowledging simply the multitudes that exist in human expertise. And I believe that that’s on the core what efficiency is: it’s an illustration of the human expertise. And so then additionally for LGBTQ college students to steer that facilitation course of additionally feels a lot to me like an opportunity for them to step right into a place of energy in conditions the place beforehand they weren’t feeling empowered.

They might have been in that scenario because the receiver of some type of discrimination or oppression. And so making them a facilitator, asking them to information others by way of that have, is, I believe, very reclamatory and therapeutic in a sure approach.

Nicolas: Initially, I wish to take this class.

Jesse: It’s a extremely fantastic class.

Nicolas: That sounds so nice. Yeah, that program sounds loads like one thing that I labored on my first yr at Ohio State with Elizabeth Wellman. We had a program known as InterAct, which sounds prefer it labored on a reasonably comparable type of mannequin, creating these fictional situations and having that second of interplay and facilitation.

It was tailored from, however undoubtedly not nonetheless— type of inside the identical realm as Boal’s Discussion board Theatre. However yeah, actually this concept of partaking each the performers and the viewers in dialogue about these very human points and unpacking: The place are these folks coming from? Why is that this occurring? And I believe that gives a extremely nice type of counter to a number of the kind of range coaching, lecture-based issues that I’ve skilled as an educator, as somebody who’s now able of energy, at the very least inside the classroom, the place it’s like, “Right here’s what to do,” or, “Right here’s a paragraph of a state of affairs,” however you don’t get to see the folks behind it.

There’s all the time a really clear unhealthy man, a transparent sense of: What do I do? However I believe one of many locations that efficiency finally ends up being actually helpful is we are able to actually work by way of what are the entire totally different dynamics happening right here. After which queer of us get to talk again afterwards and don’t have to only sit there and be like, Oh, this poor trans pupil getting misgendered on a regular basis.

Jesse: Proper, precisely. I’m so glad that you just introduced up the juxtaposition with kind of the generic DEI trainings of: “Right here’s what to not say, here’s what to not do.” And a lot of that’s so passive, it’s so inactive. It’s additionally, so… I’m not fairly positive what the phrase I’m searching for is… It’s a listing of warnings relatively than an exploration of, once more, decisions and choices.

Nicolas: “Right here’s the phrases to make use of.”

Jesse: Proper. “Say this, don’t say that,” and that’s it. However these alternatives to really put issues into the physique is one thing that I’ve mulled over as I replicate on my work with Friends for Pleasure, and I’m nonetheless type of formulating a few of this language, however this sense of kinesthetic allyship, the way you really bodily use your physique. And I don’t imply in a violence context. However how you employ your physique to place into follow allyship, proper?

As a result of that is the fixed dialog that now we have about marginalized teams is that “ally” is a verb. It’s an motion. You must really enact allyship, and also you don’t simply get to slap that label on your self after which simply be glad since you perceive one thing.

And so efficiency uniquely provides us that chance to say, “Hey, see what’s happening on this scenario, what do we expect are some ways in which we may reply to what we’re listening to or make a special selection? Okay, come up and do this. Truly put that into your physique and know what that appears like. And perceive that, sure, that is technically a hypothetical as a result of it’s not really occurring, however someday you may very well witness this occurring, and till you really put that into your physique and do it, you’re going to really feel that fight-or-flight response. So follow it proper now along with your physique. Rise up, rise up, stand subsequent to this individual that’s being spoken to disrespectfully.” After which additionally how that facilities the precise bodily presence of if any individual goes by way of one thing troublesome, simply actually being subsequent to them and them realizing that you’re a comforting presence, simply phenomenologically.

Nicolas: Fairly actually standing in solidarity.

Jesse: It’s so robust. And the scholars get to expertise that with one another too. Whenever you do this type of work, you need to spend the primary quarter of the time simply getting the scholars to belief one another, simply growing a way of, “I do know you’ve received my again. I’ve received your again. We’re a group. If I overlook what comes subsequent, I do know you’ll step in to assist me. I do know that if I make a special selection, you’ll comply with me.”

And that’s one other approach of solidifying and highlighting and reminding them that presence of being collectively really on stage is its personal type of, I believe, this sense of kinesthetic allyship. Simply realizing you can look throughout the stage and see your scene accomplice or see your facilitation accomplice and go, Okay, I do know you’re up right here with me.

After which dismantling that fourth wall between you and the viewers I believe additionally ranges that sense of energy. They’re not in that voyeuristic house a lot anymore. They’re going to come back up and likewise come stand subsequent to you. And that helps the scholars, notably the scholars that aren’t as acquainted or comfy performing. They really feel much less like they’re being simply watched and extra like they’re simply taking part with the opposite folks within the room.

Nicolas: I really like this phrase, kinesthetic allyship. I dig it.

Jesse: Thanks.

Nicolas: I prefer it.

Jesse: Thanks.

Nicolas: I believe—to tie again to what we had been speaking about—I believe a part of my frustration with these different fashions of range coaching aimed toward constructing allyship type of reside completely within the theoretical a number of the time and get divorced from the physique. And what you’re describing looks as if only a actually beautiful approach of simply acknowledging our bodies and house and the rather more lively connection to the group that’s actually proper in entrance of you, and never simply within the summary, “Ought to I encounter X type of individual, here’s what I ought to say.” It’s a literal working towards of, once more, standing in solidarity with different folks.

Jesse: And to convey it to, particularly—as a result of the Friends for Pleasure mannequin and the work that I do when it comes to within the classroom shouldn’t be centered solely on trans identification, however LGBTQ identities extra broadly—however to suppose particularly about transness, this sense of kinesthetic allyship, I believe is absolutely key as a result of I believe so lots of the methods through which cis folks have to enact allyship for trans folks is about actually having a physique subsequent to you.

Anyone to go to the toilet with you in a public house in case you’re unsure that it’s secure, any individual to be with you as you undergo TSA on the airport or one thing, proper? A lot of that’s in regards to the literal bodily presence of any individual there and in regards to the bodily presence of your physique in areas and never realizing generally if these areas are going to see your bodily physique in that house as threatening. And so to theorize, to make allyship of trans folks or the experiences of trans folks solely theoretical is… And we may do it, we may go on a complete different tangent about Cartesian dualism and the way it’s— Can I swear on this?

Nicolas: Sure, you may. You realize what? Trans folks have intense experiences, and generally we have to use intense language.

Jesse: Effectively, I may say this one other approach, however Cartesian dualism is bullshit. So I believe that that kind of reinforces, once more, that false binary of what’s or isn’t bodily. Our experiences are all the time of the thoughts and of the physique. That’s why I really like working with theatre as a trans individual, with trans folks.

Our experiences are all the time of the thoughts and of the physique. That’s why I really like working with theatre as a trans individual, with trans folks.

Nicolas: I took us down slightly little bit of a rabbit gap for a couple of minutes, so I’m going to drop you again into our dialog the place Jesse tells us a bit about how that work with Friends for Pleasure at UT Austin has translated to his work in his new place at Texas A&M.

Jesse: I used to be employed at Texas A&M by way of a college pipeline program that’s administered by the Workplace of Variety that’s known as the Accountability Local weather Fairness and Scholarship Fellowship. It’s a two-year school pipeline program that goals to extend recruitment and retention of college from traditionally marginalized teams. Entering into that program, I used to be requested to suggest a undertaking that I might full over the 2 years.

And so I proposed bringing an utilized theatre drama-based facilitation program for LGBTQ college students or reflecting the experiences of LGBTQ college students at Texas A&M. Within the fall, this previous fall, I taught the primary part of a course known as Performing Communities, which is a model new course at A&M, and it’s a core requirement course for a newly launched certificates in social activism, which is a really thrilling factor to exist.

So Performing Communities is a course that’s designed to be kind of efficiency practices with a spotlight in some totally different type of community-based theatre studying primarily based on who’s educating the course. So mine was asking the query and utilizing community-based practices to discover the query of “What do thriving queer communities appear like at Texas A&M?” And that’s a query that Dr. Hogan and I developed.

After the primary yr that I labored on Friends for Pleasure with them, we retooled the curriculum slightly bit and we shifted it from a broad overarching addressing oppression to this very particular: we’re going to try to reply or discover this query. So for Friends for Pleasure, clearly it was thriving communities at UT Austin. So I took a few of that language and tailored it to this course. I believe it’s so troublesome to speak about any of these items with out addressing being within the second that we’re in proper now, which is so wild.

However the course got down to ask this query, “What do thriving queer communities appear like at Texas A&M?” And the scholars received the chance, and I believe there’s so some ways through which being principally in-person with some hybrid components— We had been in a position to really communicate to, I don’t wish to say possibly a greater diversity of individuals than we usually would have, however folks had been in a position to simply Zoom in and communicate with us, which was actually thrilling and loads simpler for lots of people’s schedules.

So I had a small however very mighty group of 5 college students on this course, principally all efficiency research majors, some efficiency research minors. We didn’t have the posh of a two-semester probability to get to know one another. Every part was kind of jam-packed and quick tracked. However we spent the primary couple of weeks constructing that belief.

So I like to lean on storytelling. I really like the ways in which storytelling simply actually brings us nearer collectively as folks, as colleagues, as buddies. And so I take advantage of an adaptation of an train that was launched to me by artist and musician D’Lo.

Nicolas: Who you heard from earlier on this podcast!

Jesse: Yeah! So D’Lo led an train in a writing workshop with a corporation in Austin known as Allgo, which is a queer folks of coloration group. I used to be very fortunate to be a part of that workshop. And in that workshop D’Lo led an train the place contributors informed a narrative a couple of private expertise that they’d had of their previous to a accomplice.

After which as you listened to your accomplice’s story, you had been instructed to look at very rigorously and pay attention very rigorously to their physique language, their tone, intonation, the phrases that they used to explain the expertise. After which we swapped companions and needed to then carry out the story that we had simply heard with as a lot reality and authenticity to the way it had been offered to us.

And it was one of the vital impactful experiences that I’ve ever had as an artist, as a facilitator, as a participant in a facilitation, the way in which that listening to somebody’s story after which having to primarily carry out it and retell it, however put that into your physique and into your vocabulary—and I’ve a difficult relationship to the phrase “genuine”—however actually essentially the most genuine to what you simply skilled was simply unbelievable.

And so I’ve very gratefully been utilizing a model of that in a few of my programs. So for this previous semester, college students shared private tales that they recorded themselves telling, after which I requested a accomplice to take that recording of that story and create a brief work of digital storytelling. And I actually have Dr. Megan Alrutz to thank for introducing me to digital storytelling. And the Middle for Digital Storytelling out of California has simply achieved a extremely unbelievable job of getting a number of sources on their web site.

So college students needed to pay attention to a different individual’s recorded story after which put that right into a video utilizing imagery and pacing and music to symbolize that story in a visible approach. My intention behind that was to develop this sense of belief between them as they moved ahead of their work. So we did that. We had been very, very fortunate that on the identical time that the course was occurring, the Cushing Archives and Memorial Library at A&M was additionally concurrently mounting an exhibition known as Coming Out Collectively to Share Our Historical past.

And it was a group of donated sources from the Don Kelly Assortment, which is among the largest single-donor collections of fabric and archives in the whole nation. And it makes A&M really maintain, I believe the most important, if not the second or third largest, assortment of supplies associated to LGBTQ historical past, which is simply an unbelievable privilege to have entry to that work.

And so there was an exhibition on the archives of the Don Kelly Assortment, after which additionally from different private collectors across the Bryant-School Station space and Houston. So there have been quite a lot of supplies from the non-public archives of parents who had been near Monica Roberts, a number of paperwork associated to the lifetime of Phyllis Frye, the primary transgender choose who was a graduate of A&M.

So the scholars received the chance to work within the archive, go to the exhibition. Dr. Francesca Marini and Rebecca Hankins, who had been the curators of the exhibit, had been so gracious with their time to take us by way of the exhibit, reply questions. And so I had college students work with a few of that materials. I’m an enormous fan of archival analysis. I believe that, once more, going again to this sense of the kinesthetic, I believe being within the room with paperwork which have made it by way of time that had been bodily current at a few of the most traditionally thrilling and likewise traditionally mundane moments in folks’s lives is simply so transformative.

How rather more accessible I want this stuff had been to most of the people. And so getting the possibility for my college students to have that have of being within the room with these objects was essential to me. A) As a result of it gave them extra of a context to what they had been engaged on. So we’re speaking about A&M’s campus and the expertise of LGBTQ college students, workers, school, associates, and so forth.

However this context of those communities prolong extra broadly past this quick microcosmic sphere that we’re in proper now. And in doing that work, my college students turned completely enraptured by the story of Phyllis Frye. And it’s a testomony to one of many issues that I really like a lot about utilized theatre and devised theatre is the way in which that you just comply with—this can be a phrase I’m completely lifting from Dr. Megan Alrutz—is you “comply with the warmth.” You comply with the factor that comes up, that you just go, I can’t cease fascinated by that. I really feel that proper right here in my chest, and after I give it some thought or after I examine it, I can really feel it in my physique. And also you comply with that as your North Star.

So the scholars had been so moved by Decide Frye’s story that each time she got here up—and naturally she got here up continuously as a result of she was an A&M graduate and she or he’s nonetheless an lively member of the group, although, that’s not with no historical past of being rejected by the college, by the core of cadets, which she was a member of when she was right here. However when she transitioned, the college’s relationship to her modified. Due to this fact, her relationship to the college modified.

So I used to be so grateful that they’d the chance to do this. They spoke with some workers and college about their experiences and what they mirrored in regards to the experiences of LGBTQ college students on campus.

By the tip of the semester, the scholars had engaged in a few totally different tasks utilizing totally different types of hybrid and digital efficiency strategies. And what they got here to on the finish of all of it was this sense of: There may be such a wealthy historical past, wealthy and complex historical past, of LGBTQ life on this campus, the story of Decide Frye, after which the story of the authorized battle for the college to acknowledge the homosexual pupil companies group again within the seventies, which was the primary authorized ruling stating that LGBTQ college students had been legally in a position to collect as a gaggle and be supported, each not simply ideologically however financially by the college that occurred at A&M.

And people college students fought for 9 years for that to occur. And that actually set the trajectory for different universities to start to acknowledge that their trans college students deserved a spot to search out one another.

Being within the room with paperwork which have made it by way of time that had been bodily current at a few of the most traditionally thrilling and likewise traditionally mundane moments in folks’s lives is simply so transformative.

Nicolas: Within the seventies! That’s actually important as a result of, I imply, Stonewall was ’69 when it was nonetheless actually widespread for police to raid queer bars and primarily make it unlawful to assemble in public as LGBT folks. So I believe, one: the historical past goes again a great distance. That is virtually fifty years in the past at this level that we’re taking a look at, and likewise: that’s actually near different landmark moments. And what a shift!

Jesse: And in order that was, the GSS group was denied their recognition in ’76, after which it wasn’t till ’84 that the US Court docket of Appeals overturned that call. And in order that’s additionally proper, what a big yr for that to have occurred. I imply, actually what a time and for that to have been one thing that occurred at one of many largest public establishments within the nation, not to mention in Texas, is so important.

And what struck my college students about that was— So A&M’s historical past now has not solely this monumental landmark court docket case, but in addition the nation’s first transgender choose, and none of them knew about it. A few of them had been seniors who had been there for 4 years. A few of them had household who had gone to A&M who they thought-about themselves to come back from Aggie households, they usually had no concept that any of this historical past existed.

They usually had been baffled by that. And so it led us to having these actually wealthy conversations about visibility, about historical past, about what’s hidden versus what’s ignored versus what’s forgotten and why these issues would possibly occur, and what it means to appreciate that there’s a historical past that’s doubtlessly being hidden, actually being ignored, generated an intention, I believe, in my college students to not overlook.

So that they ended up making a fifteen-minute video documenting, primarily, these items of historical past that they discovered about after which reflecting on what it appears like, what they heard that it appears like, from our group members to be part of the campus LGBTQ group. They usually made these fantastic connections between how the historical past, the muse of that historical past, kind of results in what the present surroundings appears like. And one thing that one in every of our group members mentioned to them in a dialog was—we requested everybody that central query that we had been working with, “What do thriving queer communities appear like at A&M?”— and one in every of our group members, which was then mirrored by another group members, was a solution that we didn’t count on, which was that he felt that there wasn’t a thriving queer group on campus. And that wasn’t a mirrored image of anyone who would determine themselves as a member of the group. It was in regards to the surroundings through which the group is making an attempt to thrive.

The phrase that he would’ve used as a substitute to explain the group was “resilient.” And what an advanced relationship marginalized of us have with that notion of resilience and what it means to be resilient, and that it’s so usually used as a praise or a phrase of victory. And the way that additionally implies that in case you’re needing to be resilient, that there’s something working in opposition to you. And so we simply received the chance to discover so many various sides of this one singular query and this historical past of this one explicit place by way of these performative inventive practices. In order that’s what I’ve been doing.

Nicolas: Let’s see. I noticed that you just talked to Shakina Nayfack on your dissertation. I additionally received to speak along with her about her One Lady Present. And we additionally talked a bit about this concept of autobiography, and to make use of your time period, “the autobiographical assumption.” And he or she mentioned— One thing that actually caught with me was that when she was particularly performing for an viewers of huge majority cis folks inside the Broadway group, she felt a lot stress to only actually type of exploit her personal story and her personal trauma.

And I believe she’s not alone in that type of stress in telling your personal story and within the type of trans narratives which are type of, I suppose, legible culturally. I believe that’s one thing that I’ve run into in my very own work is strolling that line of, How susceptible do I be? Sure, that is a part of my story, however do I wish to repeat it? Or if I’m going to repeat it, do I do it in the way in which that you just’re anticipating me to? And the way do I type of do it in a approach that doesn’t really feel like I’m performing my trauma for these sorts of voyeuristic cis onlookers? I used to be questioning in case you’d come throughout that further rigidity.

Jesse: I all the time do, and I discover that—

Nicolas: Particularly in utilized theatre, I really feel like that comes up loads.

Jesse: Proper, proper. Oh, that’s what I used to be additionally fascinated by too, as you had been speaking, was that was kind of the motivating issue that was behind Dr. Hogan and I shifting the Friends for Pleasure format to this thriving group focus was to very particularly use this language, proper, of thriving. As a result of thriving is about rising, flourishing, being sustained, being fed, being resourced. And thriving shouldn’t be one thing that’s achieved in a vacuum with out battle, with out trauma, however it is usually one thing that suggests that by way of these experiences or due to them or despite them, you proceed to develop and also you live on and exist past simply survival, however with a sustainability connected to it.

And in order that was why we labored with that language particularly to keep away from falling into that house of exploiting trauma, of asking folks to inform us, our college students to inform us, What horrible issues have occurred to you and what do you want had gone in a different way? After which let’s inform folks how that will help you subsequent time.

Nicolas: Let’s do it for an viewers of 100 folks!

Jesse: Proper. At your college the place you’re already completely disempowered.

Nicolas: Your classmates and possibly professors.

Jesse: Proper, precisely. Precisely.

Nicolas: Probably the professor who mentioned this to you.

Jesse: Precisely. Precisely. And so how will we do this? But additionally how will we ensure that we’re additionally not sugarcoating and asking you to smile and say that the whole lot is nice? How will we acknowledge the totally different sides, the expertise of being queer or being trans in these contexts? And I believe it’s difficult. I believe it’s difficult, and I believe I personally have extra of a bent—to not sugarcoat—however I do have extra of a bent to be like, “I simply need pleasure. I simply need trans pleasure!”

I’ve had inventive collaborators and colleagues very gently remind me, proper, to not compartmentalize in that approach, and I admire these reminders. I believe that that’s why I have a tendency to essentially lean on this terminology of thriving in an try to carry that steadiness in a approach that feels wholesome.

Nicolas: That looks as if a stunning observe to finish this part of our dialog on. And at last, may you permit us with a picture of what gender euphoria appears to be like like for you in efficiency or in on a regular basis life?

Jesse: I’m a type of folks—and I’ve to additionally credit score Dr. Cáel Keegan with this sense of reclaiming the “unhealthy transgender object”— So I believe gender euphoria to me would appear like attending to play only a imply, horrible, however like scrumptious villain, actually juicy, and never fear about the way it’s going to replicate in your viewers’s understanding of your gender for whom you clearly communicate, as a singular individual.

Nicolas: The way it’ll replicate on all trans folks.

Jesse: Yeah, precisely. Precisely.

Nicolas: Thanks a lot for chatting with me.

Jesse: Thanks. I’m so glad that you just’re doing this collection.

Nicolas: Me too. This has been Gender Euphoria, the Podcast. Hosted and edited by me, Nicolas Shannon Savard. The voices you heard within the intro poem had been Rebecca Kling, Dillon Yruegas, Siri Gurudev, Azure D. Osborne-Lee, and Joshua Bastian Cole. The present artwork was designed by Yaşam Gülseven.

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