Performing Gender

I wanted to find a really beautiful image today because I still feel like hell, and I'm sick and tired of it. I thought I might feel a bit better if I could find something gorgeous to photograph, maybe something glazed with rain. I could only make it two blocks before I had to sit down and rest, grumbling and irritable. As I waited to be able to breathe again, my eyes came to rest on a Japanese antique shop. I didn't want to shoot a damn shop window, so I dragged myself inside, and there I found this Noh mask, set up in a lovely nook, with a mannequin under it, dressed in a kimono, price tags on each piece of course.

I stood there thinking of the parts of ourselves we leave behind. Masks. Roles. Back before I was the well-adjusted, peaceful, Buddhist old woman I am now, I was an actress and a professor of drama (now called Performance Studies). I often taught a course--and also a shorter workshop--called "Performing Gender." It was offered, usually, in Women's Studies, Queer Studies, Cultural Studies, those odd academic concentrations that don't lead to jobs. I taught about Noh and Kabuki. I brought an array of masks and costumes. We worked in dance studios with mirrors. We would play with our legs, our arms, our gestures, the tilt of our heads, so that we could all understand better the performances we all engage in, every day. We think we are "being ourselves," but that's bullshit. We are being something culturally constructed, almost all the time. People would realize that, in these classes and workshops, and seeing their eyes light up with understanding was one of the greatest joys I have ever known. I miss that, as a person might miss a limb they no longer have. That joy, that manipulation, I suppose, that led to recognition. Much though I love my freedom and the ease of retirement, I miss that. I miss bodies in space, opening up to knowledge about themselves.

One of the performers I loved to teach is the divine Onnagata, Tamasaburo. This eight-minute Youtube with him includes his tribute to a great Japanese actress who grew old acting, who actually grew old while she was young. Performing age and gender. If you have eight nine minutes you might like to watch it.