They Beat the Desire out of Us… or So They Tried (2023)

They Beat the Desire Out of Us... or so They Tried (2023)
Single channel high-definition video (color, sound), 10:10 minutes

They Beat the Desire Out of Us… Or So They Tried uses recorded snippets from a 2016 performance of "They Beat the Girl Out of my Boy… Or so They Tried," a 2004 addendum to famous feminist theatre piece "The Vagina Monologues," written by the original playwright, Eve Ensler, "as part of... [her] work to include the voices of all women who face violence," after interviewing "a diverse group of transwomen." It was first performed in 2004. This piece intersperses these snippets with answers from a questionnaire I gave all my actors and took myself; questions included: "What do you want?", "What have you always known?", "Have you ever ‘gone underground'?", "What could they never beat out of you?", "What tense do you live in? (Past, present, future, other?)", "Do you feel permitted to be yourself?", and "Do you feel in between genders?" I mixed up everyone's answers to create dialogues that included words from the duo involved, but often assigned to the 'wrong' person. 

I'm interested in the use of the confessional as a feminist practice/praxis, its relationship to empiricism, carcerality, and the legal system, and representational politics post the "Trans Tipping Point." If we don't always 'really' know what we want, if (cishetero)patriarchy scaffolds our very capacity for language or affect, what can we ever really get from the "Mono(logue)" as women? What can we get from "Woman" as an identity, or identity as such? And what happens when we try and want anyways?

Featuring, in order of appearance: Finn Blomquist-Eggerling, Milan Capoor, Arman Deendar, Zoe Federman, Kolya Shields, and Kian Braulik.