Astonishing, resilient, inventive. We are lovers, care takers, daydreamers. We create something out of nothing over and over again. Femmes are everywhere, at the intersections of every overlapping system of oppression – trans, POC, sick and disabled femmes have always been critical to queer movements – and femmes accomplish everything that we do having first pushed through the noise of misogyny to be heard & seen. There are as many things to say about femmes as there are unique ways of being femme; one thing that is true about femmes as a whole is that we possess a certain type of brilliance – an alchemy that can’t be quantified, but which draws us together and enables us to be bold, ingenious, and capable of a magic that fortifies our own hearts and the soul of the community around us.
A Certain Type of Brilliance is a celebration of femmes’ ability to pull amazing things out of thin air, to create on a dime, to use our vulnerability and creativity as our greatest assets in resistance to oppression.
A Note on Femme Identity: 'Femme' means a lot of different things to different people; this is part of the beauty of femme identity. For many of us, femme is a queering of femininity, a politicized expression of gender, a space to transgress expectations. For the purpose of this project, 'femme' includes anyone who identifies with the word, inclusive of all genders, bodies and expressions.
A Certain Type of Brilliance will feature eight femme performers per show, with a unique cast each night. These performers will each create a new piece of work in the 24 hours prior to the show in response to one of a series of prompts, drawing on themes of resistance, resilience, femme identity & power. (Example: Create a piece that tells your story of generational healing.) Performances will be multi-genre; the call for performers will be open to all disciplines.
Why 24 hours? Creating on such a short timeframe allows us to build fire from a spark quickly, without the work of refining and polishing. Putting this work on stage gives us an opportunity to celebrate the raw power that femmes bring to our art, and our willingness to share our vulnerability with our community.