Research: The Fake of a Fake Thing (2018)

WORKS

Funded by Post­gra­du­ier­ten­för­de­rung of Hessi­sche Thea­ter­aka­de­mie (HTA) and in colla­bo­ra­tion with the Bulga­rian artist Iva Svesht­arova, I had the oppor­tu­nity to explore the idea of ‘Hyper-Femi­nin­ity’, the life of jelly­fish and histo­ries of performing femi­nin­ity in Euro­pean theatre. Star­ting point for this rese­arch-project was our common fasci­na­tion for ‘faux’ drag queens – biolo­gi­cal women performing hyper-femi­nin­ity. The claim being ‘faux’ implies a strong state­ment about the construc­tion of femi­nin­ity itself: It’s fake. As the lady drag queen ‘Faux­ni­que’ puts it: ‘I usually say, I’m the fake version of a fake thing’. In this rese­arch-project, our artis­tic dialo­gue about the issue of hyper-femi­nin­ity was mapped out in diverse forms and we choose the format of a work­shop to share the results with students of the HTA.