We Are (Not) a Joke

In ancient Greece, there lived a person named Tiresias. As a boy, he came upon two snakes mating on a forest path and struck them with his staff without a second thought. On the spot, he became a girl and lived in that body for several years. Then one day, he encountered the snakes mating again. He struck them once more and became a man again. What matters in this story is that Tiresias ultimately chose to return to being a man.

In 2020, before debating whether transgender people exist, we must understand this: someone has chosen to exist in this body—with this mind. Someone, when a choice becomes available, must take it.

Before asking whether being transgender is innate or acquired, we must look at the strategies trans people choose in order to survive. These choices invariably lead into the subtle spaces between boundaries.

If a binary society divides human beings into women and men, there is a door at that boundary. Transgender people keep knocking on it. Some travel ceaselessly. Some live with mental illness. Some long to rewrite their formative years. Some, even in healthy bodies, think constantly about death.

Trans people live all these different lives.

Their struggles keep knocking at the boundary of the gender binary, hoping that one day the door will shatter and the wall will disappear. This play is a story about doors and knocking.

The performance unfolds in the following sections:

• Everyday Death
• Menstruation
• Metamorphosis
• We Knock on the Door (subtitle: We Are (Not) Jokes)
• A Room for Two
• And Then My Younger Sister Knocked on the Door
• Once Again, We Knock on the Door (subtitle: We Are (Not) Jokes)