In every story I tell, indeed in every episode of every
story I tell, the decision as to how to represent the characters’ relationship
to their gender is posed. It is never unproblematic.
I have realised that you cannot just let stories ‘speak for
themselves’; you are always, as a storyteller, making decisions and editing;
you hold power as the one in control of the narrative and with this power comes
responsibility. This is particularly so with
young audiences growing up in a world of towering gendered performativity,
hypersexuality, girlification, pornification, competition, scrutiny and
judgement. The vulnerable young people I work with are lightning conductors for these difficulties, perhaps extreme
sufferers of their impact, but nonetheless they highlight issues of relevance
to all young people. They have to come
to terms with, accept or reject the strictures of 21st century
gendered life.
My storyteller’s decision of how to represent gender is thus
paralleled by young people’s equally constant decision matrix as to how to
perform their own gender, what relationship to hold to it. This is something I can show dynamically in a
storytelling performance.
The performance should show different ways of being a woman
/ a man. It should move towards allowing
the audience to get some critical distance on society’s gendered expectations –
to externalise things that feel like tumultuous internal pressures. It should (perhaps above all) show the
story-ness of these stories – that the characters’ relationship to their gender
is a decision made by the storyteller and can be told other ways.
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