A white transwoman in a crumbling, burning America and a woman in medieval Persia are telling frantic stories to delay their impending deaths. Somewhere between Arabian Nights and The Road, this is a fantasy of armageddon, transgender identity, and storytelling as a survival technique.
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Imagine the world ending. A street empty of people, overgrown with vines and the sound of grasshoppers. Walk through the streets. Shatter a window. Wear only your skin. Be free. What does your gender matter now? Your shame and fear? There is no one to watch you. Leave it all behind. It must be possible. Leave your fear, your discomfort, your memories. Leave behind that one memory that you really don't want to think about anymore (that won't leave your head). Leave it behind. You are free. Forget. You are permitted to live. The world is over.
Imagine a world ended. Hold that image safe in your heart. It is a talisman. It will ward off evil. It will ward off self-hatred. It will ward off that one memory you really don’t want to think about anymore (that won’t leave your head). The memory is knocking at your door. Freeze. Hold your shotgun close. Finger on the trigger. Forget. The world is empty, so the world loves you. You were allowed to live. You have agency. You are infinitely free.
And if you hear the sound of planes, you can always hide. There's somewhere safe, right? For someone like you? Find a safe place. Tell your story. Tell any story. Someone will get it. Someone will think you are worth sparing. Tell another story. Be entertaining. Smile. You will be permitted to live.
XY Scheherazade is a transgender fantasy of survival. Bring clothes you can get dirty. You will be asked to take off your shoes.
Unstuck Theater is an extremely new Philadelphia company founded by Meryl Sands and Sam Swift Shuker-Haines at Swarthmore College in 2013. There is a crack in storytelling where fiction and reality blend. When a story that you’re telling a friend becomes, for a minute, a shared perspective. A moment when the world of the fiction in the novel you’re reading supersedes the bus you read it on. A moment when a lie you’ve told yourself for years becomes memory. Unstuck Theater takes that moment and explodes it into collaboratively-created pieces of nonlinear, socially conscious theater. Their inaugural production, Unstuck, debuted at Swarthmore College in May 2013. This is their second production as a company.
