Drawn & Quartered
Delayed due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Drawn & Quartered was originally scheduled to be performed on __ It has yet to, and may never, be rescheduled.
The following blog post on the Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble website stands as my purpose statement for this work:
https://www.danztheatre.org/behind-the-scenes-blog/it-doesnt-start-here
I’ve spent months thinking about what this performance means to me, and what it might mean to its potential audience.
Growing up as a queer artist in Indiana, it wasn’t uncommon to get somebody’s shit thrown at me from a passing car, along with a shout of “what’s up Fabio,” or “look out, faggot!” You couldn’t dress too fancy, “present” as too effeminate or artistic, and I learned, over time and repeated abuse, including from my own family, to blend in.
As a white male living in Chicago, it’s not uncommon to be sneered at by people in what are ostensibly my own queer communities, assuming I’m just another cis male, not queer enough to fit into the gay or trans communities, told to go live in my “privilege,” (which I do no doubt have), and again, forced back to blending in.
Intolerance is everywhere. I started working in an ensemble after making a series of performance works about toxic masculinity and white supremacy, and my impulse was to somehow try and codify the refraction of our belief systems as we move through the distortional and dissociative effects of these forces on our minds.
That ensemble, called Mirrorglass, is also an interrogation of the “blinkering” and fragmentation that occurs in any instance of emotional or personality disordering, or in any instance within which subjective, lived experience is fragmented beyond recognition. Similar to how art is not inherently inclusive. It has to be wrested into meaning.
I’m so proud to work with the dancers forming this ensemble as they move in and out of Mirrorglass, and to finally see myself, reflected in our efforts at a salutary artistic collaboration, so thank you to Viginia VanLieshout for dancing this with me, Tate Glover for providing choreography, Chicago Danztheatre Ensemble Artistic Director Maggie Robinson, Marketing Coordinator Sophia Sinsheimer and to the tolerant of this world.
