Performance night will celebrate and explore the trans experience

TRANS/FORM is a show that aims to fully immerse audiences within the trans experience and perspective.

Performing at the Island on Tuesday 23rd May, Wednesday 24th May and Thursday 25th May, the show will feature drag performances that seek to explore different elements of the body through the trans lens.

The group curating the show, Bussy Patrol, was created by performers Blxndie and Gender Criminal.

Gender Criminal explained the desire to create this group was to “to create a safer environment for a particularly marginalised group within the creative industry.”

As part of the show, Blxndie and Gender Criminal will perform alongside Habibi, Tammy Pink and Xanthe Kween for a show that Gender Criminal described as “a space for performers to be really unapologetically queer.”

Tammy Pink said the show’s aims are “to shrink you down and take you on the magic school bus through the trans body” –

The pivotal timing of the performance

The show is being performed amid rising tensions with the erasure of drag performance rights in some states in the USA.

Reflecting on this, Gender Criminal said: “We are experiencing a rise in the marginalisation of underrepresented voices. It’s really important we feel like we’re able to take agency again over our stories and our experiences.”

To Blxndie the title of the show, TRANS/FORM, reflects the focus on the performer’s trans bodies. “We as trans people are socio-culturally gaslit out of our identity,” they said. “We are not only told that we don’t have rights, we are told we don’t exist.”

The show aims to challenge this view, Blxndie saying the performers are “talking about bodies, our bodies are real, our bodies are trans physically.”

TRANS/FORM aims to immerse audiences into the trans experience – photo: Xanthe Kween

Increasing trans visibility

There is a need for the trans community to create themselves. Blxndie said: “We are forced to be creative in order to show we exist. We do not exist as a cultural category.”

The show aims to immerse the audience fully within the trans body and all the experiences that encompasses.

Tammy Pink explained: “We are essentially shrinking you down and taking you on the ‘magic school bus’ through our bodies. Each of the performances focuses on different body parts. Consequently, we’re joining the essence of the body to our own trans experience.”

The performers hope to challenge existing perceptions of the trans community

People who sit outside these communities still hold challenging views. Tammy explained: “Somebody said to me recently they think I’m being influenced into being trans.”

“No matter what you think about the trans community, it is a community. We are helping each other, we’re not trying to indoctrinate your kids. We’re just trying to live in peace.”

TRANS/FORM was created to address audiences’ curiosities about the trans perspective as well as challenge the status quo.

Gender Criminal said” “The power trans bodies represent is redefining yourself on your own terms and therefore redefining what society tells you gender is.”

TRANS/FORM is being performed at the Island on Tuesday 23rd May, Wednesday 24th May and Thursday 25th May. For tickets, visit Headfirst.

Andy Leake is reporting on the queer community as part of Bristol24/7’s community reporter scheme, a project which aims to tell stories from areas of Bristol traditionally under-served by the mainstream media

All photos: Xanthe Kween

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