GENDER EUPHORIA has evolved through many forms. Originally conceived as a book chapter, then developed into a lecture, then a university presentation, and finally into the piece this evening, it is a critical discussion of gender in drag.

With a background in the alternative drag scenes of Melbourne and Berlin, Olympia Bukkakis has a vested interest in exploring the radical potential of drag performance, spaces and culture. For this piece she has interviewed 13 trans and non-binary drag performers as well as conducting her own theoretical and practical research, in order to understand how drag can help us to expand our understandings of gender. Conceiving drag as a construction site where new knowledges about gender and sex may be developed, Olympia Bukkakis, along with three guest performers drawn from the Berlin alternative drag scene, Cheryl, Oozing Gloop, and Oly Stash and set designer Camille Lacadee, has researched the latent queer potential that lies in the objects that make up this traditionally masculine site of creation.

Drawing on dance, lecture, drag and cabaret, Bukkakis and her team offer you a moment away from the outside world to explore the political significance of Gender Euphoria.

OLYMPIA BUKKAKIS choreographer, writer, performer completed a BA in Social Theory at Melbourne University in Australia and 2009 while kick-starting the local alternative drag scene with her performance party Pandora’s Box. Since moving to Berlin in 2012, she has organised and hosted Get Fucked, Fancy, Apocalypse Tonight, and Queens Against Borders. She recently completed a Master in Solo Dance Authorship at the HZT with her graduation piece Tales From a State of Shemergency.

ALEXANDER MERSMANN (Costume Design) is a costume and fashion designer living and working in Berlin. He specializes in working with non-traditional materials and workmanship.

ALLISON WILTSHIRE (Dramaturg) is a director, dramaturg and writer from Melbourne, Australia. In 2009, she co-founded feminist theatre collective I’m Trying To Kiss You. In 2017 Allison relocated to Berlin, where she has collaborated with Jeremy Wade on Between Sirens.

CAMILLE LACADEE (Set Designer) graduated in 2009 from Ecole Speciale d’Architecture in Paris. Since 2016 she is based in Berlin and has been working as a freelance set designer and videographer, most recently with Talking Straight at the Maxim Gorki Theater.

CHERYL (Guest Performer) is a writer and performance artist based in Berlin. She has co-founded the internationally-renowned performance troupe The Real Housewives of Neukölln, with whom she has exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof Museum of Modern Art, participated in Stockholm Fringe Festival.

EMILIO CORDERO CHECA (Lighting) is a lighting designer with an MA in Contemporary, Technological and Performative Art from the Universidad del País Vasco. He recently moved to Berlin.

MMAKGOSI KGABI (Lighting) is a trained physical theatre and improvisation performer and also a performance facilitator. She is completing an MA in Solo Dance Authorship at the HZT.

OLY STASH (Guest Performer) is the father to a family of characters whose personas range from a medieval midwife to a musty man who indulges in misogyny while deconstructing such behaviour. Oly Stash has a BA from Bard College in performance and currently lives in Berlin.

OOZING GLOOP (Guest Performer) is a trans-aggressive spectre haunting Europe. Artist of Awe & Autism she/he/it is a pioneer within her niche of Transvestite Pilgrimage, Profane Geometry and Masstalgia. Her award winning performance, “The Gloopshow,” has been featured in the festivals across the U.K.

COLLECTIVE ANXIETY (Sound Design) graduated with a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, France, in 2015 and has since been working in Berlin. Collective Anxiety is an experimental music project by Vincent Reynaud that explores themes related to the diminution and increasing toxicity of the environment.

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1281