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(Music: Edith Piaf, "La Vie En Rose")

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Cecily: Ah, well,
I feel rather frightened.

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I'm so afraid he will look
just like everyone else.

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(Algernon sniffs)

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Cecily: He does.

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Algernon: You are my little
cousin Cecily, I'm sure.

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Cecily: You are under some grave mistake.

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I'm not little.

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In fact, I do believe I'm actually
more than usually tall for my age.

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But I am your cousin Cecily

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and you, I see, are also here
helping Jo Michael Rezes

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with their TEDx talk.

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And you are my cousin Ernest.

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My wicked cousin Ernest.

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Algernon: Oh, well, I'm not really
wicked at all, cousin Cecily.

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You mustn't think that I am wicked.

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Cecily: Well, I hope you haven't
been leading a double life,

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pretending to be good
and being really wicked all the time.

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That would be hypocrisy.

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Algernon: Well, of course
I have been rather reckless.

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Cecily: I am glad to hear it.

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Algernon: But the world
is good enough for me, cousin Cecily.

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Cecily: Yes, but are you
good enough for it?

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Algernon: I'm afraid I am not that.

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That's why I want you to reform me.

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Cecily: Well, I'm afraid
I have no time this afternoon.

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The TED talk and all.

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(Laughter)

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Algernon: Well, would you mind
my reforming myself this afternoon?

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Cecily: Oh, that's rather
quixotic of you,

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but I think you should try.

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Algernon: Good.

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I feel better already.

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Cecily: You're looking a little worse.

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Algernon: Well, might I have
that pink rose?

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Cecily: Why?

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Algernon: Because you are
like a pink rose, cousin Cecily.

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Cecily: Well, I don't think
it could be right for you

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to talk to me like that.

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Algernon: You are the prettiest
girl I ever saw.

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Cecily: But -- well, I -- I --

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Algernon: And, and ahem --

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Cecily: All good looks are a snare and --

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Algernon: Well, it's a snare that every
sensible man would like to be caught in.

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(Sighs)

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JMR: I'm so sorry, I --

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I didn't finish rehearsing.

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Um, well it's not because
I can't walk in heels,

49
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I'm actually really good at that,

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and I can prove it to you, too,
but I really am sorry.

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Hold on.

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Uh, um.

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No matter.

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No matter.

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Right.

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Right, introductions.

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It's a TEDx talk, right.

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Hi, there.

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My name is Jo Michael Rezes

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and I'm a PhD student here
in theater and performance studies.

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And I specialize in the study
of queer identities,

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as they maneuver and affect
the perceptions of time

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in the performance of camp.

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You know camp?

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Sincerity in irony's clothing?

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Making the kitsch feel like home?

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No?

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The Met Gala theme from 2019

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that was thoroughly misunderstood
by over 95 percent of its attendees?

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No?

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OK, anyway.

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I'm also an actor/director
and theater educator at large

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in the greater Boston area.

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Oh, and where are my manners?

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The friends I brought with me today
are Algernon and Cecily

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from Oscar Wilde's famously
well-known play

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"The Importance of Being Earnest."

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And they'll be back, don't worry.

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I've only scared them off a bit.

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And let's be honest,

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it wouldn't be a TEDx talk

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without things wrapping up nicely
at the end, would it?

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(Laughter)

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You know, I hope
that wasn't too awful, though.

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It was awkward, I know, to watch me fail.

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To fail at what exactly, though?

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To play a man and a woman
at the same time?

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I mean, to play a man and a woman
when I'm actually neither?

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Why does it feel so awkward

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when we see someone fail at gender

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and why do we care?

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I mean, obviously me screwing this up
was done on purpose.

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Obviously I had this all
perfectly memorized

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and rehearsed for today, right?

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Right?

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(Laughter)

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Well, I'm here today to talk
about gender performativity.

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And the ways in which I've used
my acting classroom

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as a space to disrupt the finality
of gender performance,

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to open up a looser space
for thinking about gender identity

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through supportive failure,

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generous mistakes
and honest communication.

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We all, actors or otherwise,

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can play with gender
in our everyday lives.

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And I call this gender rehearsativity.

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Now before all of the queer theorists
and women studies degree holders

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and Judith Butler fanatics in the audience

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start to tear the half-and-half,
hyper-binary costume off of my body,

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let me first explain where popular culture

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has already begun to misunderstand
gender performativity,

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before I move into
the rehearsativity I hold so dear.

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Now as an educator

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and as a youngish
20-something-year-old trans person,

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I'm constantly hearing from my
20-something-year-old students,

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friends and colleagues
that gender is "over."

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That gender is so fluid and carefree

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and that society, film and television

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are so inclusive of transgender people,

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that it's basically over.

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Now I don't ascribe to the binary,
as a nonbinary person myself.

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But gender definitely isn't over.

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Or at least I don't think it is.

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And maybe, just maybe,
gender is always beginning.

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This last semester,

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at roughly 10:23 am,

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two of my acting students,

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while embodying delicious caricatures
of fraternity brothers --

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forgive me, I don't remember
his or his name --

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Well, they rounded up the class,

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and these two women in [unclear]
and baggy clothing

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[unclear] to reveal lacks jaws
and lacks bro mentalities.

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And astounding as it was to watch,

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these women fluctuated
between irony and satire,

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the uncanny and the ruthlessly so,
pain and joy, until ultimately

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they failed to be the men
they were choosing to embody.

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They simply stopped talking.

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Silence.

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A lull hit the class

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and time seemed to be
sucked clean out of the room.

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And in this moment of loud stillness,

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one of the women,

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still using her frat bro voice,

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though fully out of character,
said nearly in a whisper

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"Gender is a social construct."

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I'll admit, I laughed along
with my students that morning.

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Partially at the comedic timing
that my student had in her delivery

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but also at the fact that society
has turned gender performativity

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into gender as social construct.

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Now, listen to this.

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I think that this idea has come
from renowned queer studies scholar

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Judith Butler,

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whose seminal work
in the performativity of gender

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has gone on to be a staple

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in undergraduate classrooms
at liberal arts institutions.

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Now, this sparknotes version
of Butler's work

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is found in the idea that gender exists
in repeated words and actions.

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And these performatives create
and are created

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by the bodies of real human beings.

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Now listen to this.

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"Moreover, in a 1988 essay,

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Butler claims that gender is an act
which has been rehearsed.

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In this way,

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gender through repetition
becomes a recognizable script

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which requires actors to reproduce it."

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Huh.

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Much like my attempt
at "The Importance of being Earnest."

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Oh, I mean, look at my costume.

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(Deep voice) Why does this half
make me feel manly, masculine, swath,

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(High voice) and this half makes me feel
girly, fabulous and feminine?

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I mean, some of us even forget
that gender is there,

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because it is so well-rehearsed
into our bodies.

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But there's always an ideal of gender
that we can never quite achieve.

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But it's up to us to play with it.

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Now, I've played with gender
throughout my own career as an actor

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and in one semester
as an undergraduate student,

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I was cast in two roles simultaneously.

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Brad Majors in the "Rocky Horror Show,"

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and Charlotte Ivanovna
in "The Cherry Orchard."

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One man, one woman and one me.

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I would go from one rehearsal,

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playing the manly, aggressive Brad,

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only to be pulled,
moments later, into a wig

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and delicately blended
eyeliner as Charlotte,

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a German governess.

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The constant push and pull
of these identities

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was not only invaluable
to my work as an actor,

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attempting to span the spectrum
of gender and my work,

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but it also revealed to me

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that my own queer identities

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are deeply indebted to embodying
the extremes of gender.

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These characters held important
facets of my identities,

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of my body,

193
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my daily pain,

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of my social interactions, of my memories,

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and rehearsing these characters
allowed me to explore those identities,

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which has opened up my need
as an acting teacher

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to show the importance
of playing with gender in rehearsal.

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So when I present to you all

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(high voice) Cecily

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and (deep voice) Aldernon,

201
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there are these parts
of these two characters that I respect,

202
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understand implicitly
oppressions I can relate to,

203
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fears I can embody,

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aggressive tendencies
that I try to forget.

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But there are also
plenty of characteristics

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with which I have no personal experience.

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Nothing I can draw from.

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And sometimes in a flurry of rehearsal,

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of reading a script,

210
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of creating a character,

211
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well, we make a mistake.

212
00:10:08,466 --> 00:10:11,234
Aldernon's aggressive
flirtation towards Cecily

213
00:10:11,258 --> 00:10:12,585
doesn't sit well in my body

214
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or Cecily's calm demeanor,
as written by Oscar Wilde,

215
00:10:16,396 --> 00:10:18,077
just doesn't sit right,

216
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and I literally trip up.

217
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Now, this TEDx talk is a performance

218
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in front of so many people.

219
00:10:26,735 --> 00:10:29,925
And it differs quite drastically
from my classrooms in that regard,

220
00:10:29,949 --> 00:10:34,014
but there is such a recognizable
pressure in our daily lives

221
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to perform our gender,

222
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our selves,

223
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on a stage like this.

224
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Quite frankly,

225
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failure to pass as a man
or a woman, effectively,

226
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is still dangerous for transgender
and gender nonconforming people.

227
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And listen to this.

228
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According to the 2015
US transgender survey,

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nearly half of respondents voiced

230
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that they had been verbally
harassed in the past year

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because of their gender
identity or expression.

232
00:11:01,483 --> 00:11:05,039
And that number has shown
only to increase in communities of color.

233
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Many of us now claim
to view gender on a spectrum.

234
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And that's great,

235
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including 60 percent
of Generation Z individuals

236
00:11:14,238 --> 00:11:16,736
who reported to the Pew
research center in 2019

237
00:11:16,760 --> 00:11:20,085
that they believe forms with boxes
for male or female

238
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should include more gender options.

239
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But in spite of this,

240
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there is still latent fear
of making gender mistakes

241
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in offices, in classrooms,

242
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in the eyes of the government,

243
00:11:32,528 --> 00:11:34,266
in romantic situations,

244
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and for some of us,

245
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even in the mirror
when we wake up in the morning.

246
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But our gender mistakes
have the potential for something good.

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Even in the binary,

248
00:11:45,926 --> 00:11:48,283
approaching life on the stage
as a man or a woman,

249
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we can support each other
in experimentation.

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Trips and stumbles,
two hour-long meditations [unclear]

251
00:11:54,212 --> 00:11:57,006
or five-second costume
changes with gender.

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And failure is a key part

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of Judith Butler's theory
of performativity.

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But I do believe that for most people,

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like you all out there,

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you might hear "performativity"
and hear "perform."

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That's to say, performance-ready

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or if not performance-ready,

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perhaps performance in general
gives you anxiety.

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Or the stage fright that I have
to this very day.

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What we need to understand
is that failing at gender

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can and should be a positive,
generative process.

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The mistakes we make with gender
can only help us grow

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and better understand the multitudes
of gender around us.

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But we need to make space
for these mistakes.

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We need to hold space for failure.

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And that's where rehearsativity
comes into play.

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Now, one of the main points
I like to make with my acting students,

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when they're last minute panicking
about a monologue or a scene,

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is that no one is ever actually ready.

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I mean, we're never actually
done rehearsing,

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we're just put in front of an audience.

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When I taught a workshop
on gender bending this last summer

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at Somerville Arts for Youth,

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I made it quite clear
to a group of middle school-aged students,

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that you cannot be a bully

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and a good actor at the same time.

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It's impossible.

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There is something
about the act of embodiment

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that requires empathy to survive.

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Bullying prohibits the creative process.

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As these middle schoolers
moved about the room,

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trying on the extremes
of binary gender presentation,

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this dissolved into galumphing,

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laughter,

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parodying of stereotypes
they see in movies and on television,

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joy in the failure to understand gender.

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Even my college students,
in Introduction to acting,

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jumped on the opportunity
to play with gender

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when I restricted their time to think.

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On Halloween last year,

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I asked my students
to come to class in costume

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and to, well, to throw their hats
into the middle of a circle,

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metaphorically and literally,

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and the only rule of the game

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was that they had to go
into the center of the circle,

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take on a hat, pick a character,

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and then switch.

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No time to think.

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And it wasn't until two men in the class

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noticed no one running
to the center of the circle

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that they jumped into the center,

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and one became

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(Deep voice) a British chauvinist,

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(High voice) and the other
a high-pitched coy British lady.

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Time stood still.

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Laughter,

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mimicry,

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joy, again,

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in the failure to understand gender.

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That's the potential
of gender rehearsativity.

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And I challenge you all

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to think of your days as mini rehearsals.

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Cultivate spaces in your life
to explore gender.

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And allow other people
to explore their gender.

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Fail at gender.

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I wish I could give you more tangible ways
to go out and do this.

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But gender is funny like that.

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Gender is an act which had been rehearsed.

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Some acts more rehearsed than others.

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But gender is far from being perfect.

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And sometimes,

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just like in rehearsal,

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when we support each other
in times of play,

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in times of joy and times of pain,

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we wind up succeeding more
than if we hadn't tried or failed at all.

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Algernon: Well, I think
that has been a great success.

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I'm in love with Cecily
and that is everything.

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But I must see her before I go.

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Oh, there she is.

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Cecily: Oh, I merely came back
to water the roses.

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I thought we were at a TEDx talk with Jo.

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Algernon: Oh.

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Well, they've gone to order
the dog-cart for me.

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Cecily: Oh.

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00:16:19,919 --> 00:16:22,093
Are they going to take you
for a nice drive?

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00:16:22,117 --> 00:16:24,466
Algernon: They're going to send me away.

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00:16:24,490 --> 00:16:25,704
Cecily: Oh.

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So we have to part.

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Algernon: I'm afraid so.

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The very painful parting.

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Cecily: Well, the absence of old friends
one can endure with equanimity.

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But even a momentary separation

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from anyone whom they've just met

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is almost unbearable.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)