Gender Euphoria: Drag as a Construction Site for New Gender Realities

2019 | berlin | sophiensaele
stage design

GENDER EUPHORIA has evolved through many forms. Originally conceived as a book chapter, then developed into a lecture, then a university presentation, and finally into a 90 minute drag/cabaret/lecture/dance hybrid, it is a critical discussion of gender, in drag.

With a background in the alternative drag scenes of Melbourne, Australia and Berlin, Olympia Bukkakis has a vested interest in exploring the radical potential of drag performance, spaces and culture. For this piece she interviewed 13 trans and non-binary drag performers as well as conducting her own theoretical and practical research, in order to understand how drag can help us to expand our understandings of gender.

Conceiving drag as a construction site where new knowledges about gender and sex may be developed, Olympia Bukkakis, along with three guest performers drawn from the Berlin alternative drag scene, Cheryl, Oozing Gloop, and Oly Stash and set designer Camille Lacadee, has researched the latent queer potential that lies in the objects that make up this traditionally masculine site of creation.

Drawing on dance, lecture, drag, and cabaret, Bukkakis and her team offer a moment away from the outside world to explore the political significance of Gender Euphoria.

Performed, written and choreographed by Olympia Bukkakis
Guest Performers: Oozing Gloop, Oly Stash, Cheryl
Dramaturgy: Allison Wiltshire
Set: Camille Lacadee
Costume: Alexander Mersmann
Sound: Vincent Reynaud
Light: Mmakgosi Kgabi, Emilio Cordero Checa
Dramaturgical Accompaniment: Isabel Gatzke
Photography: Gerhard F. Ludwig