COLLISIONS
A FESTIVAL OF
PRACTICE RESEARCH
IN PERFORMANCE
26-28 SEPTEMBER 2017
Where 4 Roads Meet: Death and the Sissy
(excerpt of work-in-progress)
Nando Messias
Thursday 28th September, 7pm
Photo Credit:
An exclusive peek preview of a one-off piece by the provocative performance-maker Nando Messias.
Where 4 Roads Meet: Death and the Sissy marks the culmination of his decade-long Sissy trilogy, facing up to the social disappearance of the sissy and the violent fatality inherently at stake in the queer condition.
The scene is a roundabout where four roads meet, a site of memory, death and rebirth. What is the Sissy's legacy? How can it be mourned? What is discarded?
Alongside the performance stands a Museum of the Sissy, a curiosity cabinet for the genuine and the phenomenal.
My Research:
Nando Messias’ research focuses on the figure of the Sissy, social violence and visibility. His work for the stage straddles performance art, dance and theatre. While focusing on his genderqueer body, Messias creates beautiful images, combining them with a fierce critique of gender. Research interests also include walking—as a queer identity marker and as an art form. More recently, his research has turned to representations of death and rebirth in performance.
Publications include ‘Sissy that Walk: The Sissy’s Progress’ in Queer Dramaturgies, International Perspectives on Where Performance Leads Queer (2016) and an upcoming chapter on ‘Performance and Activism’ (Routledge).
Messias has performed at prestigious venues such as Hayward Gallery, V&A, Tate Tanks, Tate Britain, Roundhouse, Royal Vauxhall Tavern and ICA, among other spaces across the UK. His solo work has been curated by the Live Art Development Agency as part of the programme ‘Just Like a Woman,’ shown in the City of Women Festival (Slovenia, 2013), New York and London (2015). In 2015/16 Nando completed a national tour of The Sissy’s Progress to much acclaim and press interest, followed by a tour of Shoot the Sissy to prestigious LGBTQ festivals and venues across the UK in 2017.