Tricks for Gold (T4$) is a solo for two performers, a fabula where the main character finds out that she can become the object of her own desires – money – and attempts to transform into it. Frida Giulia Franceschini wanted to explore the display of the female body in the frame of stage magic and live online erotic shows to create a biography set in late capitalism. In T4$, the complex and often abstract relation to money materialises as gold, which is produced by and transformed through sound and movement. Gold links the fetish of commodity with a fairytale-like narrative about the fulfillment of desire: bodies as living piñatas, ready to cum cash, in an infinite striptease where scenography and costumes float towards one another in a thousand layers of suspense. Franceschini is interested in the concept of “tricks” and their ability to manipulate our experience of space and time in spectacular yet uncanny moments of revelation and concealment. She has set out to work on the spectacular aspects of stage magic and erotic performances, by borrowing their specific vocabulary and dramaturgies, tenderly revealing their secrets, techniques, fragilities and the humanity behind contortions and virtuosity. In doing so, she wishes to unravel the empathic potential of what is typically seen as an act of “service” and highlight the melancholia of tricks as not simply a mode of deception – but also of survival.

“I don’t dance now, I make money move”
Cardi B, Rapper

[Source: play bill]

TFB Nr. 1407