Skin Has Two Sides
Whose body is this?
“This is my performance,” I singsong quaver. Again and again. Returning to this tune throughout the whole performance, like a bridge or echo between other things. . The line born from a desire to feel as much. Chuckling to myself about its ambivalent performativity: in the saying of it, it is so. And, it is also not. … these kinds of things can’t be only mine or yours; they’re just as co-constituted as is. Toward the end, the audience follows me outside of the Calgary theatre. I’ve somehow talked the staff into letting me use the big digital marquee out front. Its red letters are on, running dog-chasing-its-tail laps: As I stand under it—the big cold chatty giggly staring audience across the street watching me—some bro’s voice cracks out of a way-too-big car driving past: I look at him, deadpan, as the traffic lights Everyone on the other side laughs. People love it. It becomes a running gag with the pitch perfect punchline. People talk about that moment months later. It was, to me, the most impotent moment of the piece.
