Trans in Theatre: Adversarial and Jubilant Ultimatums
After one of our late night dress rehearsals for Footloose, I felt a friend to my right grip my arm during our notes. She said, “Denny, are you okay?” and I realized tears were falling down my cheeks without my notice at all. At that point, everybody fixated their eyes on me and for the first time (of soon-to-be many), I felt seen but so unseen. This was my junior year in high school, and I was cast as the male lead, Ren McCormack. Despite the crisp dance moves and singing, the director kept telling me that something was still not right about my performance. She then sat with me until midnight, where we were the only ones left on stage. Through the shakiness in my voice and my hands burying my face, I said, “It’s just hard playing something you know you’re not.”
She looked at me, and for the first time, I think she really saw me.
My senior year I was cast as The Leading Player in Pippin, a gender neutral character with a presence so demanding you can’t take your eyes off the charm, wit, and agility. Around this time I was sneaking out late at night, dressing up with my friends and going out. Liberating myself from gender roles and rebelling against their normalizations kept me stable emotionally and mentally. I was in a place where I had to dissect gender to its core in order to sort myself, and experimenting with winged eyeliner paired with a staple dark red lips and too many striped dresses allowed me to come to terms with myself at my own pace. I took advantage of the ambiguity of gender within my role in the show through androgyny.
Femininity turned from secretive repression into a hobby.
My first theatrical experience in college was an identity play reading for The Laramie Project, a collection of reactions to the homophobic murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998. I auditioned for two women in the room, one who was an upperclassman directing the play, the other an older white woman who accompanied the student director. She had a sweet and nurturing voice, and a full head of gray and white hair that complimented her soft smile. I felt an odd sense of comfort for a strange white lady I barely knew. She still recognizes me now and wishes me well whenever we bump into each other. I read a monologue they provided and was contacted the next day to play Romaine Patterson, the lesbian best friend of Matthew. It was my first time reading a part that was inherently for a woman. I don’t recall my exact emotion that given moment, but I know I was happy. Telling my friends about it felt radical and transformative. To be seen as a genderqueer person of color beyond that identity and only for talent was a big deal for me. Previous auditions for The Voice and X-Factor never went well because like my high school director, the producers could tell something was off.
The following semester, I took an acting class. The second I walked into the first day of class and saw twelve fraternity boys was the second my own ideas of theatre spaces being safe from potentially harmful masculinities were proven wrong. My professor was a mother with a smile as big as her frames, face framed by the middle part of her dark curls as beautiful as her name—Carmela. Her fingers were crowded with unique rings, her outfits casual yet bold with statement pieces—I could tell this person was comfortable with who she was, while remaining to be somewhat reserved. I envied her. I wanted her womanhood, although confusion overshadowed my lack of vocabulary to express this specific desire. All I knew to do was to wake up two hours prior to classes for the sole reason of feminizing myself. But the hesitation on femininity started the moment she referred to me with “she, her” pronouns, which led the entire class, including the fraternity boys, to do as well. At the time I reserved to gender neutral pronouns because I knew I wanted to detach myself from anything innately considered ‘male’, and unlike the most heard trans narratives, growing up without exposure to trans folks (a conscious one, that is) left me thinking my gender was concrete, and Carmela was another person to see me beyond what I knew was possible, and that is woman. Her de-solidifying my possibilities as a person gave me space to let my gender identity move and rebuild, even with words as scary as “her” and “girl”.
Not once did I ever correct anybody in that class.
Transitioning started the summer after that. I officially came out as a woman, and coming back to school was surprisingly easy. I never thought much about what it must have been like for everyone else, which led me to sleep comfortably every night thinking everyone around me must be on board as well—the theatre department included. I wish people spoke to me about concerns, or vocalized their questions, in which I would have been much slower and more patient moving forward. Instead I felt immortal and unbeatable, and receiving my first female lead in a show the same day I started my medical transition were only further signs that I was going in the right direction. I was misgendered throughout the show but I disregarded that. I recognized the ways in which I could have been critical in the moment but I disregarded that. I refused to admit that people were not seeing me as a woman because I accepted and made effort to uphold how progressive everyone involved in the production must have been to include me in the first place. Although I wore an exquisite wedding gown, I also wore three noses but I disregarded that. I felt beautiful in the midst of knowing the audience saw me otherwise—I played the freak but I disregarded that. I kept quiet because a part of me felt that staying silent as the team player would access me to more opportunities. I was right. A few months after, I was cast for the following semester’s show, where not only did I play a woman, but a woman of my race. I thought the recognition as a woman of color meant that I was perceived twice—for my gender, and for my racial background. But I was still misgendered throughout, therefore disregard became a way to navigate spaces where successes and failures were happening simultaneously.
Earning my first female role as an openly trans woman should have been the starting point to education beyond inclusion, because what is the point of inclusion if we are unaware of its purposes? What is the point of adding flowers to the living room if there are no given benefits to the overall goal of aesthetic aside from sole decoration? My personal purpose was to prove people’s inherent assumptions about trans talent wrong—not to be tokenized. It still is. But being in my position and getting two leads in a row, I had a responsibility to fulfill. The fulfillment of my responsibilities became highly prioritized because I know opportunities like these do not always work in the favor of girls like me. Taking it for granted was never an option. So when I found out I was the only woman of Asian descent to even audition I kept pretending that I played these roles because I could, not because I was needed; because I have talent, not because of profitable aspects about myself that could satisfy their agendas.
For the next few months I shared my story, making sure I expressed that it was never just a role I earned, but that I was transitioning under a microscope for the majority of campus to watch. Therefore, people knew who I was and could comprehend how big of an accomplishment this must have been for me. I bounced from one interview to the next ranging from friends’ articles to local newspaper journalism, giving them the heroic story I knew they wanted. Here I was, a nineteen year old Southeast Asian trans woman spilling my story of the adversity of transitioning at school, whilst spilling my story of triumph and attainment of playing main female characters in the theater department, knowing that there were gaps in between one story of challenge and the other of execution. I did not tell them that many people were struggling to see me beyond a man, that these roles were not the only thing I was “acting” in. I did not tell them that I felt the pressure to act woman on the daily—for the sake of being understood— and add on my character on top of that to act for. I did not tell them that I felt exhausted, stripped of my own personhood. But most of all, I did not tell them these feelings because I was warped in my own thought that the things I accomplished were courageous, and nothing else.
At least happy enough to come back my junior year believing I was going to be seen no different from the rest of the girls during auditions. Especially because none of the roles required the women to be a specific kind of woman, and therefore I sought after them as my perfect chance to really prove people that I was capable and deserving of a female role with no strings attached. For the first audition, I studied the script months prior to the audition day and created two monologues on my own from pieces in it. Oddly enough, the night of auditions, there were two female monologues provided, in which they were almost identical to the one I put together. Instantly I felt at an advantage because it was clear that the visions I had for these women were very close to the director’s. For the first time, I did not have to use vulnerable parts of me as a source of reliability, only creativity and deep understanding of the script. The second audition was for the only female role in the show. Her character development was built off of the desire and dream to be a forefront leader despite—or maybe even because—of her gender, a desire and dream I hold closely.
The following day I searched hard for my name on the callback list before realizing that I was not called back for either shows. I felt the people behind me looking over my shoulders to see the cast list, and in their exhales I heard “Sorry, maybe next time,” “Yikes,” “I feel bad for you,” “What happened?”
I felt myself in shock, but worked painfully hard to prevent any showings of defeat or weakness. I came into my junior year with content and pride in the conquering of my endeavors, and within those five seconds of glance I started to question everything I might have done wrong. Straight away I put the responsibility on me, because the professors I have worked with know what they are doing, right? They are the ones whose judgments should be trusted, no? During a callback, the people who auditioned are asked to come back because the directors or anybody else involved were interested in what they had to offer during their auditions. This can either solidify the decision to cast these people, or make them change their minds. To be stopped before the second process confused me in all angles. I saw myself back in sophomore, junior, and senior year of high school where producers never passed me through the first rounds of The Voice and X-Factor auditions because they knew something felt misaligned. But this time, I was whole, with the strongest sense of identity out of all twenty years of my life, so therefore, my identity could not have been the reason, no? I don’t want to believe my transness is the reason I was not granted the opportunity to prove myself past auditions, and it took me strength to slowly admit to myself that my experiences in previous shows were never perfect. Some days they were barely validating or comfortable. It was a difficult process having to prove my own gender before the characters I played.
I learned to prove myself—(cis) womanhood before talent, whiteness before talent, Americanness before talent (unless my race is needed)—twice as hard for half the consideration before somebody else’s name blankets mine. When I do earn a part, I memorize my lines twice as hard for half the recognition compared to someone who might embody surpassing privileges that give them access to opportunities where recognition is a routine experience in their involvements in theater. Over the past couple of months my peers in the department have comforted me with words like “it’s not fair to you,” “your gender is valid regardless,” “this is not a representation of your talents.”
For those who have been my backbone throughout this emotional calculation, I profoundly thank you. However, the problem is that there is more to this. I am not seeking out validation—I know I’m valid. I am not having these conversations to re-stabilize myself as if I’ve lost a sense of identity, but to redirect the conversation and have everybody else acknowledge why they don’t have it as exhaustive, and what integrating privileges they possess that allows them to think this issue is one sided, and therefore lacks a need to hold themselves accountable at any extent. Many of the minoritized students participate in the identity play series, where their theatrical experience lasts for only one to two weeks for rehearsals—the performance production is not as tumultuous as the faculty or student directed shows. The series allows for many unheard narratives to be on the front lines of exposure and the following discussion sessions open up the conversation into further depth. However, many of the participants are only exclusive to identity play readings, and the space to welcome them (with effort) to larger scale shows in the department is limited, thus there is an imbalance between the demographics of the regular members who participate in major production shows versus the ones who are part of the identity series. This leads to the impression that those whose identities are minoritized are utilizable when their otherness is needed—a deep pain I know all too well.
My experience in the department lies at the crux of having enough marginalized identities to truly transcend in identity play series with personal authenticity and having enough past experience to be given roles for the main stage. I aspire the space to roam freely where I can openly talk about what it means to be an Asian transgender woman in the theatre department, but also where I can express myself artistically without my sense of self being the source of muse for whatever it is I do on stage. It is impossible to completely disregard my transness, but to make my work revolved around it is no better.
There is a way for transness to flourish in plays and productions that have the potential to be progressive. Angel from Rent encapsulates the reclamation of femininity (for a person who is inherently not meant to be feminine under the socialization they were enforced into) as her narrative parallels amongst many trans women who internally struggle to claim their own girlhoods. In this I see a theatrical opportunity to have the production not only progress the show, but allow opportunities for trans women of color to showcase talent, even if Angel is traditionally a drag queen of color. A modernized adaptation allows a political play to move along with progressing politics.
There is also a way for transness to not completely diverge from any other plays, because trans narratives are not completely alienated from non-trans narratives—there will always be a bridge in between. In 9th grade, my English class read Romeo and Juliet, and nobody volunteered to read for Juliet. I felt her character on a deep level but hesitated to raise my hand—not only did I lack the language to describe my situation, but so did everybody else. All I knew is that there was more to Juliet than a girl who falls in love with a family foe; there was a young woman who craved to liberate herself from her family’s containment in order to pursue a more novel life. Due to societal pressure to please others before herself, her option was to take her own life—an emboldening statement of redemption and salvation. This is not uncommon in many lives of trans women and trans femmes. In 2014, Cincinnati, Ohio, a 17 year old transgender girl named Leelah Alcorn stepped in front of a tractor trailer on Interstate-71 after posting a suicide note online saying “My death needs to mean something.” In her note, she mentions “When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart.” In Leelah’s heartbreak I see the story of Juliet—a suicide not driven from love, but driven from social abuse that prevents the embrace of and ability to love. Adaptability of transgender stories into mainstream stories is possible.
I dream of transness in theatrical spaces to be acknowledged, not as a cause for muse or a reason of dismissal. I dream of this phenomenon of theatre as a safe space for LGBTQ+ people beyond cis, white, gay, flamboyant men. I dream of trans girls and trans femmes of color like me celebrated on stage as much as we do advocacy off stage. I dream of people who hold power in theatre to mobilize their privileges, and hold themselves accountable to take it further to tell stories that matter, stories that marinate in truth, stories that can impact the audience yet provide benefits for those involved, because it is the right thing and it is doable if you care enough.
Make them happen. If the show must go on, do not leave some of us behind.
