National Queer Arts Festival

the National Queer Arts Festival & AIRspace presents

Sunny Drake (Australia) with 2 solo pieces:
Gender-queer Seeking… and Other-wise

& an exhibition by Woo of "The Spiderboi Files"
(a choose your own gender adventure graphic novel)

Wed June 18th and Thurs June 19, 8.00 PM
@ The Garage, 975 Howard St (@ 5th), San Francisco (near Powell St BART station)

Cost: pay what you can (suggested: $10 – 20)
Reservations: 415 885 4006
Or online at: brownpapertickets.com
** the June 18th show will be ASL interpreted


SUNNY’S PIECES

Other-wise

Children, can you say gender-queer? Can you say this morning on my way to school I lost my homework and the dog ate my gender? Lkdjfaowiute sldjkiuewt ;kdsghjhrdl asjf ckjhiuwer askdfjo;wiuetrlsajf. Confused? Welcome! Gender adventurer Sunny Drake takes up the challenge to try to articulate their/ his/hir gender journey, to arrive at this brief moment in time: gender = carnivalesque magician. By the time you see this performance, the moment will probably have passed. A hide-and-seek peekaboo at misogyny-and-tokenism-in-childhood, invisibility, class and white privilege and getting comfortable with ambiguity. Other-wise includes a performative documentation of the process of coming out to Sunny’s family (picture Sunny sweating and fretting a little at this point in anticipation of this terrifying process). Video & visuals by Dana Aleshire.

Gender-queer Seeking…

Have you ever wondered if what you think you want is what you really want? Or just what you’ve been taught to want? In this one-person-show, in collaboration with visual and video artists Dana Aleshire & Alana Heiner-Smith, Australian performer Sunny Drake explores love, heartbreak, and the manufacturing of emotions. An embarrassing, vulnerable and exposing look at Sunny’s internal world of fantasies, run-ins with the polyamory police, green monsters, and how internalised capitalism and relationship scripts play out in the narratives of radical communities.


ABOUT SUNNY

Australian performer Sunny Drake is a human critter who weaves story-telling, theatre and creative movement with layers of sound and visuals. Sunny embeds intimate and exposing autobiographical stories in broader political contexts, creating performance that is socially relevant and resonates with many different people’s experiences. Explorations include body image, gender, sexuality, concrete, sexual assault, identity, confessions, fear and professionalism. Sunny has performed in many places around Australia, the USA and Canada including in theatres, festivals, living-rooms, backyards, forests, streets, basements, work places, conferences and deserts. Sunny’s solo works include Gender-queer Seeking…, Umbilical, I Should Have Turned the Mattress Over too and The Pencil Test. Sunny is currently doing a residency at The Garage theatre in San Francisco, and working towards shows in the National Queer Arts Festival and the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Sunny was born on stolen Indigenous land in Australia (Jaggera-Turrabul land, Brisbane) and comes from English and Irish ancestry. Contact sunnydragonflight@yahoo.com for more information.


ABOUT WOO & "THE SPIDERBOI FILES"

"The Spiderboi Files" is a story-time, choose your own gender adventure graphic novel that chronicles Spiderboi's commute from tidy femininity to embodied sexuality through pen and ink documents of passing. Recently performed at the Judson Memorial Church as part of the Movement Research Festival, one of the panels has been selected for Fresh Meat in the Gallery V: Riots and Revelations and will also be performed at the Trans March on June 27. For more information visit http://eucalyptusraven.blogspot.com/


Alysha Wood (Woo) is a graduate of Naropa University's M.F.A. Writing & Poetics program and holds an undergraduate degree from Hollins University. A writer, dancer, and performer, Woo's critical and creative work appears in "Across and Between the Void" (Achiote Press, 2008), In Dance, Galatea Resurrects, Feminist Review, Cliterature, Glimpse Abroad, and "Focus on the Fabulous: Colorado GLBT Voices" (Johnson Books, 2007). Woo performs with The Rice Kings, a San Francisco bay area API drag king troupe.