In 2016, when crossing Waterloo Bridge in London, someone threw a burger at Travis Alabanza and shouted a transphobia slur. Over a hundred people saw it happen and nobody did anything. They didn’t ask if Travis was okay. They didn’t say anything to the attacker. They just kept on moving.
In 2018, Alabanza
– a performance artist – created Burgerz at the Hackney Showroom. The
production has since toured the world the world to great acclaim. The show’s
reputation precedes it and it’s an important piece of trans-led theatre.
As part of
the Trans Theatre Festival, presented by the Green Room Theatre Company, Travis
Alabanza is performing the show in Australia for the first time. After its
recent run at Carriageworks as part of the Sydney Festival, the show is now
playing at the Malthouse as part of Midsumma.
Trans
Theatre Festival director, Dino Dimitriades, gave a keynote address at the
opening night of the festival in Melbourne, talking about the importance of
trans-led theatre. Beyond the issue of mainstage companies not making trans
work, Dimitriades spoke to a notion that trans bodies on stage breaks old
paradigms. And it’s not enough that trans performers might be on stage through
gender-diverse casting; their views of the world need to be captured through
their writing and performance.
Burgerz is that kind of show. Developed by
Alabanza to explore their experience of violence and the lack of help from
bystanders, every night they invite a straight white cisgender man on stage to help them make a burger.
And together they discuss race, gender, violence and complicity. It’s
deceptively simple in set-up but powerful in the way it all plays out.
Now,
finding a straight white cisgender man at the opening night of the show at an arts
festival – or at least one that would put his hand up to volunteer – proved a
bit tricky. Eventually Travis found a man willing to help out. His name was
also Travis. Alabanza wonders if perhaps they made the wrong decision not to
change their name. It’s an amusing moment of synchronicity.
Making a
burger is simple, of course. But for audience-member Travis, it becomes trickier
when performance artist Travis starts asking questions. Are you afraid of men?
How, as a man, does that make you feel – to be afraid of the thing that you
are? What’s your relationship to race? Have you ever felt put in a box? When
was the last time you cried?
Audience-member
Travis was a good sport, talking about growing up in small-town Echuca, feeling
out-of-place there and finding his way as a music producer. He was in touch
with his emotions, articulate about gendered violence and made a hell of a pile
of onion-rings!
Alabanza is
part interrogator, part cooking-show host: charming and funny and ready to take
us through the original moment of transgendered violence and the thoughts that
ran through their head in the years since. If only, Travis said, they understood
the burger more. An explanation for the attack is much clearer.
Designer
Soutra Gilmour (ably assisted by Isabella Van Braeckel*) gives us boxes within
boxes – and surprises inside each: a reminder that we’re all trapped by
assumption and expectation. Director Sam Lindsay has crafted a show that puts
the audience and the nightly guest-star at ease, because we understand the
shape of the show very early on. This isn’t a bait-and-switch kind of drama but
a thoughtful meditation on a moment and an idea.
It's such a
cliché – in film and television and on stage – to make stories of gendered
violence feel gritty and hard to watch, as if we need to be reminded how terrible it is. The simple conceit of Burgerz allows Alabanza to tell us about an
awful moment in their life, while entertaining us and audience-member Travis
with asides about their life and their experience. Occasionally we’re jolted by
a moment of raw honesty, but we always feel safe. (Travis asks Travis for their safe-word early on!) Alabanza and the
creative team don’t want to put us through what they went through.
They do want us to all agree that we’ll never throw the burger and, if we witness
something like it, we’ll always step in to help.
Burgerz deserves the rave reviews it
has garnered all over the world. It’s a remarkably assured piece of confessional theatre:
thoughtful and funny and leading with empathy. It’s so full of layers, as all
great burgers should be.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Burgerz is on at the Malthouse Theatre as
part of Trans Theatre Festival and Midsumma until January 31
* Isabella
is a friend of mine who designed a TARDIS suitcase for my show, Who Are You Supposed to Be, that debuted
at Edinburgh Fringe in 2013
Photos by Dorothea Tuch
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