This intimate, affecting one-woman production from the performance artist River Roux about the experience of existing in and as an intersex body is a work of sociology, of history and of autobiography, but most of all of poetry.
Housed in a see-through box and wearing a Spandex leotard accessorised with a yellow rubber jacket, skirt and gloves, Roux cycles through positions in a kind of collage of scenes depicting bodily inspection in doctor’s offices, cold case notes of dubious scientific value, microhistories of gynaecological chair kink, and more abstract, introspective reflections – all of which she delivers with deft control of rhythm and intonation.
There is an undeniable tension between Roux’s meticulous vocal and bodily control as she delivers her prose-poetry and the pulsating music that punctuates the interstitial moments between texts (when she often uses the acrobatic circle at the centre of the box-stage). But while Roux was previously part of the Berlin Strippers’ Collective, her manoeuvres are beside the point; the quiet, disciplined monologuing is this show’s centring bodywork.
And you might not leave with a full sense of all the history and thought that Roux has worked through in this performance (it is more elliptical than explanatory), but as you listen to her final soliloquy about shaving every few hours to prevent the appearance of stubble (or having shaved or even having had to shave), you can’t help but be impressed with how this performance illuminates – and critiques – the Sisyphean ritual of making the unruly, intersex body legible. Out of estrogen pills and testosterone gel foams poetry. ★★★★
- Volksbühne, Linienstr. 227, Mitte, Jan 17 and 18 & Feb 5 and 6, English, details.
