Nina Arsenault » buddies in bad times

my speech from Pride Prom 2010…

ninaarsenault — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:54:06 +0000

(The following is my speech from Pride Prom, held at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, produced by the Triangle Program and SOY (Saving Our Youth). The Pride Prom is an annual prom in Toronto for LGBTQ and Questioning youth and their friends. It gives them a chance to come to a prom with same sex dates, be outrageously queer and there is a Prom Queen, King and Ace. The Ace is for anyone not comfortable identifying as a king or a queen.)

Thank you for having me here today. I want to welcome you all to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I believe that usually when we come to the theatre we come to watch characters onstage, people, have experiences and to watch them transform as they have experiences. And as we sit in the darkness in the audience, hopefully, we can let our hearts open. Maybe we let our hearts open just a little bit. And, if we let this happen it can be really quite amazing to watch people transform. It can also be very moving to realize that we are all on a journey that is unfolding in front of us. I think that is one of the things that makes the theatre a very magical place. When it lets us see that.

Tonight, I am very privileged that I get to speak to you at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre at the Pride Prom. As you graduate from high school. It’s my hope that you are enjoying the moments of this time in your life. Because this is a time of transition for you I expect it will also be a time of transformation for each of you. I encourage you to let your hearts open, just a little bit. You are witnessing everyone’s transformation and your own.

It can be very exciting to watch the Theatre of our Own Lives as it unfolds.

The Theatre of my Own Life has been very exciting for me.

I went to high school in a very small town in rural Ontario. When I was there I was a very effeminate person in a boy-body, and I hope things have changed in that small town for young queer people, and I know that they have.

One of the things that comes to my mind when I think back to my high school is that it was a kind of theatre, too. It was a very small high school so there were people watching other people’s lives unfold. In fact, we were all witnessing each other’s lives. Commenting about it. Talking about it. Getting caught up in the drama.

Sometimes people could say some very negative things about each other.

I did everything I could to perform well there. I performed very well in class. I was a “straight” A student. And, I performed very well after class in the drama club. I performed very well in our school’s production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I liked performing very much, and I suppose I was known for it in my high school.

I also made sure to perform very well in the hallways, and in the cafeteria and after school. In between classes I made sure that I guarded my impulses and didn’t do anything inappropriate for my small town high school in the 80’s. Don’t be too effeminate. Don’t be too flamboyant. Don’t be too creative. Definately don’t be too creative. Don’t be sexual in any way around straight people. I performed that very well.

I wanted to be liked. I wanted to have friends and be accepted. So, I performed very well whenever other kids were watching me which was pretty much all the time in the Theatre of my High School. It was very challenging for me to always be performing, but it paid off because I got to survive.

But in a way I made an unspoken deal with some of the other people at my school. I would perform in certain ways and not in others ways if they would accept me. And they agreed to this agreement, too.

But once I made that unspoken deal with people they could be very critical of what I was performing and how I was performing. In fact, almost everyone was a critic. Everyone had an opinion.

Some people complained I was too artistic. Others said, “Why can’t you just let yourself be as artistic as you want to be?” Some said I was too unusual. Others said, “Why can’t you just embrace the fact that you are unusual. Most people said I was too effeminate. Others said, “Why can’t you just get over the fact that you’re effeminate and stop caring what other people think?” I was too proud. Not proud enough. Too forceful. Not forceful enough.

There was always something wrong with my performance. It was never good enough, and the criticism came form both sides.

Sometimes the most painful criticism of what I was doing was, “Why can’t you just be real? Why can’t you be the real you?”

It’s very hard to be real inside that kind of theatre. With an audience always judging.

(pause)

I always used to think that if I was famous everyone would accept me. Once I was famous people would really want to get to know the real me. I was really looking forward to being the real me. In a way, I wanted to perform the real me.

I don’t think that to perform is only to be fake. After all, we perform daily actions. We perform brushing our teeth. We perform carrying out the garbage. We perform actions. We perform saying hello.

Hello.

I do my best to perform as well as I can.

(pause)

Now I work at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre creating performance. I’ve made two plays. One is called The Silicone Diaries and the other is called I was Barbie. Each of the plays are from the Theatre of my Own Life. They are real life stories. Both of them have been directed by the Artistic Director of this theatre, Brendan Healy.

When I got the job of doing my plays here I didn’t know if I could actually do them. I didn’t know if I would be strong enough to withstand other people’s criticisms. But I agreed to do it anyways, hoping for the best. Trusting everything would unfold.

One of the things that I liked most about working with Brendan is that he has never tried to tell me who to be. He has never tried to make me or my plays into his version of me, what he wanted me to be. That made me trust him, and that made me like him.

One of the other things that I liked about working with him is that he spent very little time talking to me about what I was doing wrong. He mostly talked about what excited him about what I did. He could always find something to be excited about. It is very energizing to listen to someone talk about what is exciting about you. I very much liked coming to work. A big part of his job in supporting me as a performer was being encouraging of me. The things that I was doing wrong would start to fall by the wayside.

And the performances we made came into being. Unfolding, transforming, in unexpected ways. Because instead of not-doing what I was doing wrong, I continued to explore what was exciting. We came up with some very exciting stuff that surprised even us. Following our excitement.

(pause)

When I think of my life, I could not have imagined the way that things would unfold for me. I couldn’t have planned it like this. I don’t think I could have gotten to where I got if I kept focusing on what was wrong with me. I got here by following my inspiration, by looking for what excited me. I think that every version of “me” that I have been performing, every chapter of my life, unfolded into the next version of “me.” There have been several me’s so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what other me’s I will perform, too.

Each time I was performing a different version of myself I wish someone had told me, “Nina… Rodney, you can relax a little bit, the person who you are pretending to be right now is the person you are.”

I think I would have felt a whole lot realer at each point in my journey.

I want to encourage you at this moment of transformation to see each other and yourselves in the best possible light. To see all the good in each other that is there. Do not listen to the people who criticize you. They can not possibly understand how distinctly, how wonderfully, and how unexpectedly you and your life can unfold. You could live a great drama.

And instead of attacking what you do not like in others. I ask you find something you do like in them. If you appreciate it that part of them, it will grow. A lot of people preach the subversive power of violence and anger. I believe in the subversive power to change that comes from appreciating the good.

I would like to finish with a quote from Martha Graham, a famous dancer and choreographer who was very wise about the artist’s process. But I would like to take her words and apply them to all of you. All of you are performing the stories of your lives, and I invite you each to think of yourselves as a piece of walking art, as performance art, art that is unfolding.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, … that is translated through you … and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly…”

To be QUEER is to be a SUBLIME OUTCAST, a message from Buddies in Bad Times’ Artistic Director

ninaarsenault — Fri, 14 May 2010 04:27:51 +0000

(from www.buddiesinbadtimes.com)

New Artistic Director Brendan Healy says: “When I accepted the position of Artistic Director, I was aware of the company’s important legacy and its need for renewal. As a queer artist, I identify with dissenters and mavericks. I have always considered myself an outsider, which affords me a perspective that is apart from mainstream ideals of beauty, art and love. I rebel against moral and cultural clichés around consumer-driven lifestyles, sexuality and identity politics. My vision for a queer theatre is one that embraces this outsider status in order to challenge established notions of morality, human relations, history and politics. In this age of cultural homogenization when difference is erased and divergence is feared, the queer point of view is more necessary than ever. This, my first official season, represents a bold reassertion of Buddies’ relevance as an artistic and political force in our city.”

Buddies’ proudly continues its commitment to new play development, gender parity and diversity with five works written by women, two by First Nations artists, five world premieres of original Canadian works, and the return of our ever-popular annual Rhubarb Festival with a new Festival Director, Laura Nanni.

Next season, Buddies will also extend its reach nationally with two of the company’s most successful recent productions embarking on cross-country tours. Both Agokwe and The Silicone Diaries will return to Buddies as they begin to travel the country with stops in Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal.

And last, but not least, Buddies will open its doors to an international perspective with the English-Canadian premiere of a major queer work from abroad. Sarah Kane’s brilliant and controversial play Blasted will finally get a professional Canadian production, outside of Québec.

The 2010-11 Season engages with the broader world. It fearlessly tackles experiences of citizenship, racialization, religiosity, marginalization and social repression. It is a season that encompasses the full complexities of contemporary existence with quintessentially queer humour, intelligence and ferocity.

(photography by Tanja-Tiziana)

I’m performing on a double bill with d’bi.young at PSi

ninaarsenault — Fri, 07 May 2010 02:34:31 +0000

on June 8th, I’ll be performing on a double bill with d’bi.young at the Performance Studies International conference. The event happens at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

I will be performing i was Barbie. d’bi will perform She.

d’bi is a brilliant and prolific artist, and I am excited we are performing on the same night.

Performance Studies International (PSi) is a professional association founded in 1997 to promote communication and exchange between scholars and practitioners working in the field of performance.

The organisation has staged numerous international conference and festival gatherings that have moved between the discourse and practice of performance. PSi conferences have been held across the U.S.A. and the U.K. and in Germany, New Zealand and Singapore.

To check out their website cut and paste the following link:

http://psi-web.org/

I’m your official hostess for Pride Prom 2010!

ninaarsenault — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 04:40:58 +0000

The Pride Prom is a spectacular, end-of-year celebration & graduation party especially for Toronto’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and transsexual (LGBT) high school students and their guests. Each year, hundreds of queer & trans youth and their friends join us as we crown the Pride Ace, King and Queen! The Pride Prom features celebrity hosts, food, entertainment, spinning by well-known youth DJs, contests and prizes. Past hosts have included actor Adamo Ruggiero, diva D-lischus, comedian Elvira Kurt, Taufiq, Much Music VJ Sook Yin Lee, the lovely Jane (AKA Sky Gilbert), and the marvellous Mirha-Soleil Ross. This is definitely an event you won’t want to miss!

The Pride Prom is co-sponsored by The Triangle Program and Supporting Our Youth.

It takes place at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Brendan Healy: The man behind the curtain at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (from Xtra! magazine)

ninaarsenault — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:46:15 +0000

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.

I’m in the main space at Buddies, watching him rehearse Breakfast, which opened March 19. It’s a remounting of a collectively devised show that scored three Dora nominations when it played at the Theatre Centre two years ago. He directed it then and is tackling it again with the same cast, though he says they have collaborated to produce a new and stronger ending. There are some 11 people milling around, but there are only three actors, all women (the others are techies — it’s a tech-heavy show). The comfort level among them, and with him, is very high. There is much light-hearted banter about the repeated request “to set a sound level for the orgasm,” which sends one actor into several extended — and convincing — sighs-and-moans arias.

He’s not a director with a reputation for tantrums or incivility. If Healy wants some adjustment on the set or lighting, he’s likely to phrase the request as, “I don’t know how you’d feel about…” Performer Nina Arsenault, whom he directed in The Silicone Diaries, describes his technique as “generous, empathetic, supportive and smart. If we ever had disagreements, I had so much trust in him that we could just talk it out. It was so clear that he is committed to his love of performance with all of his being.” Daniel Brooks, artistic director at Necessary Angel, met Healy when the latter was a student at the National Theatre School in Montreal and remembers him as a “bit of a control freak who can get very emotional if he feels things are slipping out of his control, but directors are often like that. He is also an incredibly sensitive and personable artist with an attraction to the real human process that theatre is. He gets very alive, human performances from his actors — and dictators don’t get that.”

Performance helped lift him out of the gawkiness and insecurities of his childhood. In his early teen years, he got involved with an inner-city youth project in Montreal. The city had turned over an abandoned hangar to a bunch of kids and encouraged them to create, direct and perform new plays, and it was there, he says, “that I came into my own. I’d been lonely and isolated, and this gave me a way to connect with others. I came out, got laid, got drunk and started smoking.” (He has yet to quit, and periodically takes a cigarette break during rehearsal.) He had his first sexual experience at 14, with a girl. He has had other sexual experiences with women and says his greatest love (of the non-sexual variety) was a woman, who came out at the same time he did, was his muse, and is currently “a very lean, very muscular, very queer performance artist who lives in Los Angeles.” Still, he prefers men, sexually and romantically, and loves “the companionship of men. I like being around men. I like their masculine energy.” (He is currently in a long-term relationship with Gregory Prest, an actor with Soulpepper). He’s queer enough not to shut any doors, and though he’s never had sex with a trans person, he enjoyed the almost stereotypical male/female dynamics that informed his collaboration with Nina Arsenault.

“For the first time in a long time,” he says, “I allowed myself to feel really attracted to a woman. I like feminine women, and she really embodies that — lighting her cigarette and opening doors for her, those man/woman rituals. She’s very good at making you feel like a man. I can get into those gender roles. They’re fun, and playful. I don’t war against them.”

Though he studied directing at the National Theatre School, he began his career as an actor, most memorably playing the kind of queer little boy he once was in a drama called Girls! Girls! Girls! He describes himself as an actor of limited range, but he found that role particularly challenging.

“They wanted me to be really faggy. I’d straightened myself out when I was 12 or 13, become kind of uber-masculine and athletic. I got a kick out of people thinking I was straight. Suddenly, I had to deal with my own internalized homophobia, and that was hard for me.” It did help him realize, though, that he was a much better director than he was an actor, an awareness fortified by his experience interning in Manhattan under the legendary Richard Maxwell, of the New York City Players.

“He had a huge impact on me,” Healy says, “through the uniqueness of his voice and the purity of his pursuit as an artist. It was really inspiring. He’s an auteur, and I gravitate towards auteurs, people who are on some kind of investigation larger than the work. I like to think that what motivates me as a creator is more than just getting the show up, that I’m asking questions about existence, about life, about theatre and performance, about what theatre means, about why it’s important to society.”

Asking those sorts of questions in a queer context is part of his mandate at Buddies, where queer is defined as considerably more than gay, lesbian, bi and trans. According to the company’s official mandate, it includes “work that is different, outside the mainstream, challenging in both content and form.” Healy, who cites influences ranging from Foucault (“his History of Sexuality rocked my world”) to Derek Jarman and Jean Genet, has an articulate take on what he calls the three fundamental queer values: a true celebration of difference, a rejection of assimilationism, and a rejection of essentialism.

“We say people are different from one another, and that’s okay and it’s important. It keeps society rich and open and dynamic. We reject assimilation — being accepted doesn’t mean fitting into the status quo. It’s the status quo that should adapt itself to difference. We reject essentialism because, though queers celebrate difference, it doesn’t mean that we can’t get along. Maybe your difference will rub off on me, and make me a little more different, like you.”

If that all sounds crazy hopeful and pie in the sky, that’s because Healy also believes queers are utopian.

“We believe,” he says, “that one day homophobia, sexism and racism will disappear. That the queer liberation movement is also about liberating straight people. Queers are happy, self-actualized individuals, and we look at straight society and we see really contrived relationships and pre-determined modes of behaviour. We’re all about liberating you. We’re all queers. It’s just that some of us are more open.”

That’s unashamedly 1970s-era gay lib talk, and it’s good to hear it from someone who wasn’t even born then. He’ll need that passion and all his smarts, energies and enthusiasms to cope with the challenges facing theatre in general and queer theatre in particular. Buddies has experienced bad times of late. Audiences get smaller. People are busier. There are more forms of entertainment than ever. Healy is pleased that Buddies has the youngest audience base in the city, but that won’t mean dumbing down, or less risk-taking. He wants to work with young creators who are interested in a collectivist approach (as unfashionable as that might be in an ego-fixated, celebrity obsessed world). He wants to produce content-driven work. “I want meaning,” he says. “We have to go back to ideas.”

A tall order. It’s good to know it’s in the hands of a one-time more or less fucked-up little kid with blue fingernails and a crazy fantasy life, a kid who grew up but never quite lost that queer edge. Just right for Buddies in Bad Times.

Gerald Hannon is a Toronto writer and member of the board of directors of Xtra’s publisher, Pink Triangle Press.

Brendan Healy to direct remount of i Was Barbie

ninaarsenault — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:48:47 +0000

Buddies in Bad Times Artistic Director and Silicone Diaries director Brendan Healy is going to be working with me again, directing a new revised production I Was Barbie. The new production will show this summer at multiple venues. I will post more details when I can….

Last summer I Was Barbie played to sold out houses and standing ovations at We’re Funny That Way, the queer comedy festival, Buddies in Bad Times Pride Festival and Halifax’s Queer Acts festival.

I’M INSPIRED BY… Taylor Mac

ninaarsenault — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:56:26 +0000

I saw Taylor Mac perform at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre’s Rhubarb! festival last February. She was one of the most inspiring live performance artists I have ever seen. This queen is making the world a better place, one performance at a time.

the trailer for Silicone Diaries

ninaarsenault — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 02:30:12 +0000

a video trailer for my one woman play The Silicone Diaries…

Observing Breakfast…

ninaarsenault — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 06:43:38 +0000

Karin Randoja in Breakfast

I learned a lot working with professional artists over the course of Silicone Diaries, and I knew I would learn even more if I observed the process from the outside again. I asked Brendan Healy if he would let me observe the remounting of The Independent Aunties’ Breakfast -both rehearsals and production meetings. Thanks to The Independent Aunties for letting me come aboard. I am very much looking forward to seeing your work.

Here’s info below on Breakfast from artsexy.ca

BREAKFAST
Mar 17 – Apr 4, 2010

Created by the company
Written by Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry
Directed by Brendan Healy
Featuring Karin Randoja, with Evalyn Parry and Anna Chatterton
Set & Costume Design Julie Fox
Sound Design Richard Windeyer
Lighting Design Laird MacDonald

“Utterly compelling … titillating and threatening” Xtra! Magazine

Nominated for 3 Dora Awards, Buddies is thrilled to present a remount of the Aunties’ highly acclaimed and unnervingly intimate production.

Meet Marnie, a woman trying out a self-help program in an attempt to “move ahead” in her life. The audience is invited to her kitchen, as voyeurs to Marnie’s morning rituals. “Randoja’s absorbing, fearless performance” (EYE Magazine) anchors this surreal and chilling encounter with one woman’s psyche, which takes an unflinching look at loneliness, self-delusion and our cultural obsession with self-help and personal transformation. You’ll never look at breakfast the same way again …

“One of the top ten shows of 2008″ Paula Citron, Globe and Mail

Developed through the Theatre Centre Residency Program

Photo of Karin Randoja by Jeremy Mimnagh

‘An Interview with Canada’s Most Famous Transsexual’ (from Exbalibur, York U’s student paper, Nov 4th, 2009)

ninaarsenault — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:51:20 +0000

AN INTERVIEW WITH CANADA’S MOST FAMOUS TRANSSEXUAL

by Evan Vipond: Contributor [to Excalibur]

Nina Arsenault is commonly referred to as Canada’s most famous transsexual. Arsenault has two postgraduate degrees in theatre, one of which was completed at York University alongside her undergraduate degree. After quitting the theatre world to transition from man to woman and undergoing 60 cosemtic procedures, Arsenault has recently re-entered theatre as both playwright and performer. Her most recent play, The Silicone Diaries, will be produced by Buddies in Bad Times Theatre from Nov 14th to 21.

EVAN: Playwriting is about creating a story, while directing is about representing or interpreting someone else’s story. Which do you prefer, the role of the primary creator or the interpreter?

NINA: Primary creator at this point, absolutely. Because the thing is, where I am in my life, my identity and my history, there’s not a lot of stories like mine. It’s not like I can filter my experience through another writer’s words. I don’t really know any other writers [like me.]

E: Your recent theatre work has been autobiographical. do you see this as a continuing trend?

N: Yeah, definately. I just think that turth is stranger and more interesting than fiction. And I think that the way I live my life and who I am is pretty unique, so I might as well just keep going. I trust that my life is interesting, that my stories are interesting, so I will do that.
     I think a lot of work I see about trans people is either documentary stuff, which is great, but that only satisfies in a certain way, and then a lot of it is really fake –like campy stories about trans people. So I want to explore aspects of my experience which aren’t necessarily “documentary” and that speaks to different sublime qualities in my life.
     The things is, as a trans person, rarely do we ever get to tell our stories in the way we want to tell them. Even when there is someone doing a documentary about us, and there have been so many documentaries about us, it’s rarely us who’s putting it together. So it’s always someone else who’s constructing our narratives.
     That’s somethng I like about autobiographies: that it’s my story and how I want it put together. But I’ve also read , mainly in books, autobiographical material about other trans women. Some of it I really like: some of them I have real problems with, so I want to be part of that conversation.
     I feel like a big part of trans narratives has really pushed this idea of “i’m just a normal woman, and if I wasn’t born in a man’s body, I would be just like everyone else.” There’s this push to normalize trans identities and trans histories, and I want to be a part of that cobversation because I actually don’t think I’m normal. I don’t think that I’m a normal woman who was born in a male body. I think that cultural [zeitgeist] can’t begin to encompass the complexity of my experience.
     I think that born-in-the-wrong-body idea was just something that was said along the way that was really good on talk shows, that can shine some sympathy on us and is something that we can say to doctors to get our sex changes, but I don’t actually think it’d true. I think it’s just this zeitgeist that has picked up momentum and people go along with it.
     But in private, my rrans girlfriends aren’t like non-trans women. They’re not. They don’t talk about the same things. They don’t have the same jobs. They don’t have the same privileges either. They don’t have the same social status. They don’t have the same ideas about sex, men, love,marriage, children — they’re so different.

E: What is the importance of queer-trans theatre visibility?

N: Well, we don’t get to be on TV or in movies very much, and, when we are, it is usually non-trans people who are putting it together.
One that that I like in theatre, in my work, I can pretty much just do it by myself. Now with Silicone Diaries I have lots of other people like my dramaturge, my set designer –but it’s not like there is some person who has the money strings who can say, “No, you can’t say that. You can’t do that.”
LGBT identities are becoming more hetero-normative than ever. So that is something that makes me think that trans and queer voices are really important in theatre because theatre can be a place of resistance and difference, where those things are nurtured. But really, if you look around [Church Str], we are supposed to be in the queerest area of Toronto, but you and I are the only two queer people – visibly queer people – that I can see.

E: Do you consider your work and your art that of a trans-queer activist?

N: No, I do not, because I feel like as soon as I call myself an activist then [I'm restricted.]
     Activist art is about social change, making people’s lives better [...] I do not want to have to put that constraint on my artistic expression. I want my artistic expression to really be this channel that comes through me, and I want to be able to say [what I want.]
     I mean, I’ve said alot of things that people think are not [positive]. A lot of times people say, “Oh, you shouldn’t say that; that makes trans people look bad” or “You’re a really bad role model.”
     I do not want to be telling my stories because I’m trying to do this social good. I am actually trying to create art and speak to the complexity of my experience. As soon as you are trying to always be a good person [you're restirtced.]
     I think activism is great. I just don’t think I’m an activist. I want to be able to explore my dark side. I want to be able to talk about my selfishness. I want to be able to explore my narcissism, my vanity; that does not go well with activism.
     I do not so much have a political agenda, a capital “P” political agenda, like that. And I think the art I like does not as well. I want dark and light interwoven in the work, and dark and light are interwoven in my work.

E: Your artistic work is well known within the queer community. Do you feel you’ve entered the mainstream? If so, in what way and what has been the result? How, if at all, is the reaction different from the distinct communities?

N: Well, I can not say I can generalize about the communities and their reactions. I think that everyone who comes up to me to talk about my work always has a different reaction and response.
     A lot of times I am really surprised. I’m like, “You thought that? You thought that’s what it’s about?” or “It made you angry because of what?” Everyone is bringing their own stuff to the work. They bring their own history and their own viewpoint. I just can not believe some of the responses sometimes.
     If there is one thing I can kind of generalize about, I do feel like a lot of times people who like my stuff are outsiders. They are people who do not fit in [...] I like that because I have always felt like that.
     I think because I am trans a lot of people have asked me, “What are you doing for the community?” They almost demand that I be an activist, that I say good things about trans people in the media and that my work should be about getting sex-reassignment funding, convincing people that trans people are normal and pleading for parents to accept their trans kids more.
     I believe in all those things, and I think you can make compelling art about those issues, but I do not choose what I make art about. That might sound like a cop out, but I do not pre-meditate what I make art about. I just get obsessed with an idea and I feel like I have to express it. And really what I am trying to do is get back to whatever that hunch or that idea or feeling in me is about in the most truthful way.
    Imagine if trans people were only allowed to put out activist art. I see documentaries about us and I really see campy stuff about us, but who is exploring the complexities of trans identities in a really honest way without a political agenda? I think that is important work as well. I think that is artistic work that can nourish people’s souls and spirits, make them better people, but I do not consider it activism. I think it is a really great thing.

E: Is it important for queer art to enter mainstream space, or should it remain in opposition to mainstream? If queer does enter mainstream space, is it no longer queer?

N: I certainly do not have a problem moving my work into a mainstream space. And I think that if I did, it would still be queer, absolutely.
If Canadian Stage produced Silicone Diaries people would still be coming to see the same play. I also totally think it is okay for artists to sell out. and I hope I get the the opportunity to sell out big time, because I want the opportunity to make money. I deserve the venture, because a lot of times in politics you can make a lot of change working from the inside.
I don’t think that the only way to make complete change and to be totally queer is to be resistant and angry. I think you can create change working within the greater system of powers that you have.
Ellen DeGeneres has done a lot to combat homophobia being on network television. There is just no way around it. Even when she does not talk about it [...] people know she is a lesbian, and she is absolutely charming and personable. I think that creates a lot of change, and I do not think that work is either queer or not queer. I think it depends on who is viewing it and what they are doing with it. I think that there are often very queer elements in mainstream stuff as well.

E: In 100 years, what would you most like to be remembered for?

N: For being a trailblazer, for being a revolutionary, for being fabulous, for never giving up on beauty.