Title: “Clearly Marked” – S. Bear Bergman
Location: EV 1.605,”York Amphiteatre”, EV building, 1515 Ste. Catherine Ouest,
Link out: Click here
Description: The Union for Gender Empowerment along with QPIRG Concordia, Centre 2110,
WSSA Concordia, Queer McGill, & Queer Concordia, present
S. BEAR BERGMAN
–queer theatre artist, writer, educator, and instigator–
performing “Clearly Marked”
November 10th, 8pm
in EV 1.605, “York Amphiteatre,” EV building, 1515 Ste. Catherine Ouest,
Concordia University
[this event is wheelchair accessible]
free or pay-what-you-can.
AND
giving a lecture entitled “Sing If You’re Glad To Be Trans”
November 11th, time and place TBA
also free or pay-what-you-can.
[from the website www.sbearbergman.com, about “Clearly Marked”]
Labels are so sticky, so opaque, so inconvenient at some moments and such a blessed relief at others. But what happens when labels get larger than the person they describe? What happens when they start intersecting, being incomplete or unclear, taking precedence when you’d rather they didn’t? What happens when other people label you in ways that don’t quite make sense? When you want to be a part of two different communities, and neither
community wants you to wear the other label and theirs at the same time?
*Clearly Marked* is a hilarious, high-impact, thought-provoking theater piece that peels back the layers of the labels we all wear and digs in to what’s underneath. As Bergman’s signature warm and accessible storytelling begins to unfold on the stage, lines between categories start to blur and old labels start to have new lives. Also unique is the loving examination of Jewish tradition and community which Bergman – an observant Jew – brings to
the stage. In the revelation of a lifetime’s worth of Bergman’s accumulated identities, *Clearly Marked* opens up a place for anyone to be more complicated than the label ze wears on top, and questions the society that demands we wear so few.
Fearless as ever, with *Clearly Marked* Bergman grapples with religion, body image, gender, sexuality, and the perennial bathroom problem – not to mention life as the Little Jewish Ambassador, how gender is like a highway, being a fat kid, strategic lesbianism, gay marriage, and how to explain it all to your Aunt Petunia in a way that doesn’t completely freak her out.
No matter what label you wear when you arrive, *Clearly Marked* will send you home feeling both different from *and* connected to everyone around you – and you’ll like the feeling.
[from the website www.sbearbergman.com, about “Sing If You’re Glad to Be Trans”]
While the difficult narratives of trans life are valid and deserve our attention, is it not perhaps enough with the all-misery-all-the-time tranny channel? Being trans is not a reason for pity, scorn, shame, or apology.
This lecture celebrates trans bodies, communities, awareness, sex, love,
particular talents, successes and self-creation with a faultless logic and
good humor that may just make you appreciate transfolks (or being trans) in
a whole new way.
Start Time: 18:00
Date: 2008-11-10