The Making of Pinocchio / Alkantara Festival 2022

Becoming Bodies

Passing, going full-time, going stealth, undertaking reassignment therapy or surgery – the vast terminology associated to the process of gender transition is as diverse as the steps each individual can take in their own journey towards a more congruent self in terms of sex, sexuality and gender. Indeed, just like a single story can be told in a myriad of ways, transitioning, too, is not necessarily a straight or direct route from one end to the other, but rather a flow of potentialities capable of deconstructing and reshaping both the perception and the materiality of our world, and Scottish duo Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill know this all too well.

Invited to Lisbon for this year’s Alkantara Festival, the renowned queer artists and LGBTQIA+ facilitators based in Glasgow presented in the D. Maria II National Theatre their latest production, The Making of Pinocchio, «a show that joyfully embraces the importance of imagination in constructing a queer world and the idea of a trans identity as a state of possibility». It all began in 2018, when MacAskill, in a quest for gender euphoria, decided to begin his transition and, together with his partner in life and in art, also to document it. And what better way to transpose this process to the stage than by calling forth the most famous, albeit unsuspecting, trans being of them all?

By operating an ingenious and subversive parallelism, the history of the puppet that «wanted to become a boy» gets re-narrated through a gender-aware gaze that embraces the personal struggle of the couple to come to terms with their recontextualised relationship, all the while addressing with gentle yet cunning satire the political implications of transgender identities. Indeed, from poetical ultramarine seascapes to tree-humping follies, The Making of Pinocchio does not pull any punches, unsparingly expanding the horizons of perceptions through a plethora of communicative devices that elegantly come together in an impeccable and self-professed «relaxed performance». As a matter of fact, the meta-theatrical scenography designed by Tim Spooner, Jo Palmer’s light design, Kirstin McMahon and Jo Hellier’s cinematography and Yas Clarke’ sonorities all add up to deliver a gorgeously fluid theatrical documentation of a likewise fluid identity re-appropriation, thus creating a resonance between the form and the content that one rarely witnesses on stage.

Ultimately, by avoiding any and all (however legitimate) tirade against the rampant gender policing and full-on transphobia present in the current mediatic and political discourses and by inviting a more heartfelt, compassionate reflection on normativity, Cade and MacAskill manage to lovingly enact an emancipation from gender structures that is mainly carried out through the senses, thus talking directly to our naked selves and teaching us how liberating becoming a body can be.

The show is still playing within Alkantara Festival 2022
Teatro Nacional D. Maria II
praça Dom Pedro IV – Lisbon
from 12 to 13 November 2022
Saturday at 19:00
Sunday at 16:00

the Alkantara Festival 2022 presents
The Making of Pinocchio
by Rosana Cade and Ivor MacAskill

with Ivor MacAskill, Jo Hellier, Rosana Cade, Tim Spooner
scenario, props and costumes Tim Spooner
light design and production management Jo Palmer
sound design Yas Clarke
cameras Jo Hellier
photography direction Kirstin McMahon
executive production Mary Osborn
scene direction Sorcha Stott-strzala
external look Nic Green
commissariat Fierce Festival, Kampnagel, Tramway & Vooruit with the support of Attenborough Centre of the Arts, Battersea Arts Centre and LIFT
production Artsadmin
financed by Creative Scotland, Arts Council England and Rudolf Augstein Stiftung
with the support of The Work Room/ Dianne Torr Bursary, Scottish Sculpture Workshop, National Theatre of Scotland, Live Art Development Agency, Gessnerellee, Mousonturm, Forest Fringe, West Kowloon Cultural District & LGBT Health & Wellbeing Scotland

Ph. by Christa Holka