(This article was originally published in The Harold Times, the Fringe Theatre Festival of Toronto newspaper, on Monday, July 5th, 2010. The Harold Times is a small publication primarily distributed at fringe theatre venues and its main readership is theatre artists and people who have a special interest in alternative live performance. FYI- This piece is not a manifesto. It is a series of reflections.)

13 reflections from an unreal queer artist
by Nina Arsenault

1.
When I see theatre I see almost exclusively queer theatre now. I usually feel uncomfortable waiting for the lights to go down at non-queer shows. I understand that theatre spaces try to be inclusive. Still, I feel stared at and judged. No offense.

2.
I also do not have TV or internet in my home. I found most television programs repellent. The internet would consume my time. I got rid of them two years ago. Occasionally, I rent films.

3.
But, queer performance is mostly what I see. The pieces are usually radically different in form and content. This does not make it “challenging” to experience the works.

4.
I ask myself how to structure a new piece of performance? What is the paradigm for its form? Stylistic qualities? I am already forgetting what normative dramatic forms are. They aren’t what is normal to me anymore.

5.
Not knowing what else to do I work from obsession.

6.
I do not begin making performance to correct a social wrong. I am not trying to make the world a better place. I can not justify my creativity with a simple political statement. I haven’t tried to get an art grant.

7.
I know it is painful not to create. It is painful for my expressions not to be witnessed. It is painful not to have interflow with other creators.

8.
Having no TV or internet has intensified (and rarefied) my need to create and connect.

9.
I recently explored and saw a word based play with a linear structure. A dramatic arch with no digressions. Delineated characters with clear intentions. The characters had their feet firmly on the ground, maintained eye contact while talking with each other and had no generalized anxiety. Everyone so sure of themselves. The play, itself, had also had a singular accessible political message. I was fascinated by it. I was quite surprised the audience could accept this representation of reality as “real.” It was so unreal to me, so shockingly alien.

10.
In a talk-back after the show the audience and charismatic cast joyfully agreed with each other about the meaning(s) of the work. Some audience members offered suggestions about how the work could be changed to offer a political statement they would be even more comfortable with. An artist took notes. This was very affirming.

11.
I stayed at a hotel recently. After two years away from TV I found it mesmerizing. I enjoyed that it told me exactly where to look. What to notice. Where the story was going. What the characters were thinking. The message. The meaning. The score told me what to feel. The images, the pace, the rhythm told me what moments were important, more important, most important. For me, it was a sublime experience of being thought controlled. My moment to moment reality was so focused. Such order was hypnotic. It was a far more compelling experience than theatre that was telling me what to think, although after a few hours I began to resent the manipulation. Because I began to notice the machinations through which I was being controlled I felt my cognitive sophistication was being underestimated. I felt belittled.

12.
Although, I continued to be fascinated by many moments of family dramas, crime shows, hospitals –fragmented disconnected moments of straight actors/characters/people possessing stillness as they spoke. Not fidgeting. Holding eye contact. Their voices were easy-going yet also revealed their emotions. So casually. I want to believe that the way straight people behave in the privacy of their domestic relationships, homes and at work is very advanced. They are incredible performers (when I am not around?)

13.
I began to watch news casters and entertainment-tabloid television. I liked the way these announcers talked even more. I first experienced them as automaton-like. Then, I noticed that these robots seemed more like the real life people that I deal with. More real even than the reality show actors. Their voices illustrate what they are feeling. I also sensed that they are inferring what I should be feeling, what they want me to be feeling. They are so confident, so charming, so buoyant, so joyful that I could find little room for disagreement. I agreed to feel what I should have been feeling, what was charismatically implied I should be feeling. It was very comfortable and perhaps artificial (which is not a bad thing for me.) I am not surprised that I can accept this representation of reality as real.

Nina Arsenault is a writer, theatre maker, media artist, aesthete and transsexual cyborg. Check out her website www.ninaarsenault.com

Thie following is from the Toronto Star. To view the article on their site CUT AND PASTE THE FOLLOWING LINK:

http://www.thestar.com/living/article/822008–sexy-transsexual-nina-arsenault-on-life-art-and-her-penis

by Jim Rankin, Staff Reporter (photos also by Jim Rankin)

This won’t be a narrative about a girl trapped inside the body of an awkward boy from Beamsville, who went through 60 plastic surgeries and cosmetic procedures to transform her body into Jessica Rabbit with a penis she remains rather attached to.

Nina Arsenault — whose critically-acclaimed autobiographical play, The Silicone Diaries, will brighten stages this fall and next year in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa — decided a while back that she was tired of others telling the story of her journey to “reclaim” her body.

Yes, beginning in 1999, she embarked on a long, painful, and at times scary metamorphosis that included risky surgeries and illegal silicone injections.

But, sitting behind a desk at the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, dressed in a clingy, low-cut black top, leather miniskirt and fishnet stockings, the 36-year-old former sex worker, writer, lecturer and performer with two postgraduate degrees in theatre and playwriting prefers not to dwell on that.

Arsenault is in demand these days. Pride celebrations are around the corner. She’ll be hosting parties, including a prom for young lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and questioning queers.

She will also take to the stage at the upcoming IdeaCity conference of big minds in Toronto, and tell her story.

Later this summer, at Theatre Passe Muraille, she’s scheduled to perform i was Barbie, another autobiographical play that riffs on a real-life gig she had to “represent a doll accused of f—–g up the body images of millions of little girls.”

As she put it in an email, it’s a “spiritual portrait of a glittery, digitally-commodified, plastic world from the point of view of a silicone transsexual who represents Barbie at her official birthday party and the opening night of Fashion Week . . . shades of Andy Warhol.”

Yes, she can write.

Her days consist of workouts, voice training with singer Fides Krucker and writing with mentor and collaborator Judith Rudakoff. She works out of her downtown apartment, where she oversees her publicity, right down to the cropping and airbrushing of photos that appear on her website. She likes, she says, to have the final say on everything, a prerogative she has borrowed from Madonna.

So, rather than a narrative, a Q&A followed by a photo shoot orchestrated by Arsenault seems appropriate for a woman who describes herself as a queer artist, and her body as a queer art object.

Q: You’re not the kind of model that sits back and lets the photographer call the shots?

A: No. I see myself more as an auteur. I like to be the subject of the work, but also the creator of the work. As transsexuals, there’s just been so many documentaries about us and they’re usually put together by non-transgendered people. The emphasis is always to make us palatable to whatever audience that’s being spoken to.

Q: How have people tried to make you more palatable?

A: No. 1, they try to make you less sexual. Less sexy.

Q: How is that possible?

A: I’ll take that as a compliment. Sometimes, I’ve done things for a newspaper where they’ll say, ‘We can’t print that photo. It’s too sexual.’ It’s just something about the way my lips are, or there’s maybe cleavage in it. And my response is always that people can get this online now — provocative, naked photos. I think that print media is really behind that way. Another way of making someone who is queer palatable to a normative mass audience is to pathologize them. It’s to say that the things that are different about them, the things that are unique about them, it must be because that person’s f—-d up. Certainly, I’ve been accused of that — it’s dysmorphia, intense perfectionism or narcissism. I always refuse to accept those perspectives on my life. I think it’s very important not to listen to your detractors.

Q: At what point did it become art for you, the transforming of your body? Yes, there´s more…. »

The interview is in two parts (below), and it’s about 20 minutes long. Cynthia Loyst and I chat about my transformations, straight men who are attracted to transsexuals and about my upcoming play I was Barbie at SummerWorks 2010. Brendan Healy, my director and the Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre joins us later in the interview, too!

The show originally aired on Friday, June 4th. Big thanks to Star Network and CP24 for having us on, and for supporting queer performance!

This interview is from last summer (2009) when I went to Halifax with my play i was Barbie. Since, I’ve reworked the text with dramaturgy from Judith Rudakoff. The new draft of the script is being directed by Brendan Healy. The new production is very exciting.

i was Barbie will show this summer 2010 at Performance Studies International (notice below) and at SummerWorks (also below.)

It covers some of the same things that have already been said about me in the media, but, I think it’s a funny interview.

photo by David Hawe

(this story –about Silicone Diaries director and Buddies in Bad Times Artistic Director Brendan Healy– originally appeared in the March 25th issue of Xtra!)

(by Gerald Hannon)

He’s the man who was once a gender-ambiguous little boy with fingernails painted blue (applied by his openly bisexual dad), a little boy who loved to play with dolls and dollhouses, who made those dolls part of an “insanely rich and detailed dynasty,” a little boy in a rough part of town who got beat up a lot, whose hippie parents split before he was born, who spent a lot of time alone, who had a rich imaginary life, who grew up bilingual in Montreal. That may not have added up to a “lovely, pastoral childhood,” as he puts it, but it does read like the perfect background for a career in the arts.

Today, Brendan Healy is the artistic director of Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. He’s only the fourth to hold that position in the company’s 31-year history, and he’s the youngest. That’s a description that makes him just a little uncharacteristically grumpy. “I’m fucking 34,” he says. “I’m not young. I know what I’m doing; I have life experience. I’m not some kid.” He’s no longer gender-ambiguous either, with his mildly caffeinated masculinity, his crisply ironed shirts and his conservative ties. Don’t let those externals fool you, though. He’s as queer as they come. Yes, there´s more…. »

(this article origanally appeared in the March, 2010 issue of Outlooks, Canada’s National LGBTQ Magazine)

“Nina, … Nina, … Nina, …”
(by Doug Ross)

Nobody I know screams ultra-fabulous in quite the same way as the infamous and ravishing Nina Arsenault, a statuesque
transsexual goddess, fast becoming worthy of first name status only—a la Cher, Marilyn, Judy, Madonna—by an ever-expanding group of idolatrous followers. When Pride
Toronto honoured Nina with its prestigious “Unstoppable Award” in 2007, their good taste was roundly applauded.

Although Nina’s controversial metamorphosis—
awkward man becomes curvaceous
bombshell—has been excessively chronicled
by major media sources, trust me when I tell you
this provocative information seems freshly
compelling when revealed entre nous by the lady
herself during her sensational, autobiographical
one-woman show “The Silicone Diaries.” While
celebrating her personal transitioning process,
Nina unflinchingly discusses the approximately
sixty plastic surgeries and/or medical procedures
she willingly endured, as well as the sometimes
nefarious practitioners she unfortunately encountered.
She also serves up her scandalicious past
as a much-in-demand sex trade worker—for the
sake of beauty—in a bravely candid, unapologetic
manner. Yes, there´s more…. »

Search for me: NinaArsenault

UPDATE: I was kicked off of twitter. The company explained that they could not “authenticate” me. They weren’t convinced I was “the real” Nina Arsenault. They were afraid I was “a fake” Nina Arsenault. I thought that was hilarious. I will try to impersonate myself more convincingly from now on LOL

A very interesting letter about me in the Letters page and a pic of me and drag queen Lena Over in the gossip page, Exposed!

This interview was shot on the opening night of LG L’Oreal Fashion Week. It was the launch of David Dixon’s Barbie-inspired fashion line for real women as well as the 50th birthday party of Mattel’s best loved plastic doll. I was asked to represent Barbie that night.

from What'sUp Yukon

story by Jerome Stuert
originally published in Whats’Up Yukon, Jan 28, 2010
http://www.whatsupyukon.com/index.php/2010-01-26-22-30-28

Nina Arsenault warns me that she’s not about to tell the “typical” transsexual story to Nakai Theatre’s Pivot Festival audiences.

You know the story, she says, “Her name is Barbara, she used to be Markus, she never felt right in her own body, she met a doctor and now she’s getting boobs. It’s the same thing over and over.”

The problem is not in the “trannie” telling the story, she tells me, it’s the reporters, the media, the way they want to streamline every transsexual story the same. It’s the facts they want to give an audience. So, she’s glad when I tell her that she and I are just having a conversation and that it can go where she likes.

Arsenault likes writing her own message in this one-woman show: “I’m interested in art and discourse. I want to go beyond the thing [transsexualism] itself. It’s time for the discourse to progress.” Yes, there´s more…. »