Carrie's Response to Candy

I've tried to post a couple of times but keep finding I need to think more--hopefully I have it all in order! I've had a bit of difficulty fully isolating affirmation from questions..so there are a few questions up here and more in the real question section.

First off really great session--I want to go through a couple of things that I thought were particularly *smart* about the various activities.

Gender worksheets:
-While I agree that I wish I had more time to respond to the questions of defining gender, there is something to be said for not having time and also to have to fill out something that looks quite a bit like an essay exam--I've never had to "declare" my gender before (Except for in a class I once took where we were assumed queer unless we chose to come out otherwise, although I was fine with being queer identified). That that declaration would have to happen under pressure created a lot of anxiety in me and a sense of loss with everything I wrote down--there was no way i was going to "get it right."
First this is an almost impossible task--to articulate your gender is to essentially cut away from what you are not and in that I personally experienced a great deal of loss, or continued to try to fight against a sense of loss, cliche and stereo-type. In defining I relied on a sort of internal sense of who or what I am and who or what I identify with. In the instructions, it came down to a set of behaviors that were repeatable by others (not an uncommon butler-esque sense of gender) but for me it highlighted that gender as a performance is always in reaction to or in reference to. (if you play this role, I'll play this one. If I can't play this role, I don't want to play) There is also a great deal of nuance to the way it plays out differently in different kinds of relationships and in response to different kinds of stimuli. But above all, putting gender in terms of instructions really foregrounds it at something that is a) learned b) repeated c) not really natural for anyone--its an uncomfortable place to have to name, define and codify your gender
I almost wonder if some sort of gender questionaire or some sort one-ness for defining gender might be put on the audience as a preshow activity or even through the play (I think it really opens the play up to a productive place to approach it from that feeling of failure/loss/complication of defining gender)

-I really love the way gender is handled in this play already, particularly in the opening minute: a girl who was a boy, a boy who was a girl...a human being. But in order to be a human being, Candy becomes larger than life (not a human being and in a way, neither). Really really interesting. A lot of the theoretical writing coming out of the mid 60's early 70's (I'm nerding out again, but maybe this will be useful) relies on the idea of third termisms, a construction of neither, nor, but (so for instance neither capitalism nor communism, but some other way: democratic socialism?) In these writings it is a sort of utopic vision which never quite pans out and can never quite be articulated or ends up re-affirming the initial binary, but the impulse to get outside of the binary, even just to get to an imaginary space, doesn't go away.

-I think the most useful part of this excercise was having only the tools at hand. Seeing the "bag of tricks" got me very excited, but having to work with what I had was difficult--I can't wear frost colored lipstick, there was no eye-liner, there was only so far I was going to get with what i had. I do have to wonder where it was I thought I was going to get to...but again. There was an inital sense of excitement, and then an inevitable sense of not enough.

-One of the questions you posed in your goals sheet was about the relationship between history and truth, this excercise made me wonder about the relationship--as cliche as it may sound--between truth and beauty in this play. Matching up insides and outsides. Also the difference between change/transformation (into what?) and beauty--are they one and the same? I think the relationship/pull is actually between all three of these terms: truth, change, beauty.

Themes that popped for me coming out of both days: Identification (who or what you identify with), Transformation, Death/Rebirth/Art(yes all together like that), Production/Reproduction/Origins, Chance

Questions:

-Looking at the picture of my mother made me very aware of which of her values and behaviors I've internalized and which I've tried to go beyond or get away from. A lot of the anxiety I feel around becoming my mother or emulating my mother has to do with place (as I think it does for Candy as well, maybe) the suburbs vs the city--I became sort of vitriolic about her fleece and flax--I'm really interested in Candy's relationship with her mother and the room of fashion magazines as identificatory people/objects, or even just what the relationship between the suburbs and the city is (there seems to be some mutual dependance mediated over space, separation)--I guess this also got me thinking about where psycho-analysis was at this point in time (huge in the 50's, beginning to come under increasing scrutiny and criticism by the late 60's, exposed as relying on homo-phobic anxiety by the 70's). I want to know more about how Candy identifies or doesn't with her mother and her mother's lifestyle.

-Time: I love the idea of the play being structured around the 15 minutes--as it stands, the 15 minuntes of fame seem to be this play--is that enough for you? Is there any relation between the "minutes" you've chosen and the idea of 15 minutes of fame?

-What is Candy's relationship to the audience? (I noticed there were a lot of questions about the audience in your pre-workshop goals.) Is there anything that she wants from them?

-What is the difference between Candy's ritual of "making herself beautiful" at the end of her life in the hospital and before that? What has changed?

-I noticed a lot of judgement/morality/blane creeping into the room in the second day particularly around Andy Warhol--I wonder what Candy's life would have been like if she hadn't met Andy and want to know more about how she met Andy (there seems to be a lot of chance at play in the formation of Candy's life--her gender was a chance, meeting her first drag mentor was chance...etc)

-I want to know more about what Candy thinks about Andy--I also wonder (in that this play seems poised somewhere on the continuum of solo performance and not) what it would be like if Candy played Andy, or if we saw Andy in some sort of mediated way.

-I'm interested in the dynamics of Andy's group--in some ways this seems like a replacement for the family structure--how did it work? Were there jealousies? A cycling of who was in favor and who was not? Positive aspects?

-Who does come to see Candy on her deathbed (wow that was powerful as played in class)

-What would have happened if Candy's operation had been successful?