Artists Reach Out: Adrienne Truscott

Dear friends,

Welcome to Artists Reach Out: reflections in a time of isolation. I dreamed this series of interviews out of grief for my work both as a documenting arts writer and curator of live performance. In this time of social distancing, we are called to responsibly do all we can to safeguard ourselves and our neighbors. It is, literally, a matter of life and death.

But there's no distancing around what we still can share with one another--our experiences, thoughts, wisdom, humor, hearts and spirit. In some ways, there are more opportunities to do so as we pull back from everyday busyness out in the world and have time to honor the call of our inner lives.

So, let me introduce you to some artists I find interesting. I'm glad they're part of our beautiful community, and I'm eager to engage with them again (or for the first time) in years to come.

--Eva Yaa Asantewaa, InfiniteBody

Adrienne Truscott

Adrienne Truscott
(photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Adrienne Truscott’s work straddles many genres as a means of creative and financial curiosity and survival--choreographer/comedian/performer/writer and half of The Wau Wau Sisters, a 15-year-long boundary-busting cabaret collaboration. Her work over the years--as both performer and maker--crosses lines and methodologies between dance, theater and performance art, and these iterations appear as both seven-minute acts on the drag and club circuit to evening-length pieces. Her critically acclaimed Adrienne Truscott's Asking For It continues to tour, is being made into a documentary special and is considered a critical impetus to the evolving discourse about rape culture and gender.

She’s a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award Artist (Dance) and a 2017 and 2020 FCA grant recipient for Theater and Performance. She’s been presented by or performed at such iconic venues/series as Sydney Opera House, The Moth, The Roundhouse, CBGB’s, PS122, The Kitchen, Danspace, Judson Memorial Church, MoMa among others. Director’s credits include David’s Friend, Lords of Strut, The Cockpainter, Glace Chase Is Talented, and currently AmericanMotherFuck. She’s an occasional writer for The Guardian, and her essays have been published in two Australian anthologies.

Shows currently on tour are THIS (2018 Bessie Nominee for Outstanding Production, Wild Bore (Green Room Award (AU)) and Adrienne Truscott’s A One-Trick Pony. She was about to finish development and rehearsal on Grey Arias with Le Gateau Chocolat (UK/AU) for Malthouse Theatre (Melbourne) before so many things were cancelled, and is currently rehearsing remotely with Brokentalkers (IR) and developing a new solo piece about genius and gender. Past collaborators include Deborah Hay, David Neumann, Split Britches, Sarah Michelson, John Cameron Mitchell, Kiki and Herb, La Soiree/La Clique. She has taught at Wesleyan, Barnard, Bard, Princeton and NYU.

She wears many hats and is attracted to the thrilling possibility of failure as a mandate for rigor.

Adrienne Truscott
(courtesy of Project Arts Centre, Dublin)

Do you have a current or planned project whose progress is affected by the pandemic?

I was in Melbourne working on a project with my friend Le Gateau Chocolat. We were mining our ten-plus years of friendship, correspondence and repartee that mashed up politics, allyship, the darkest of humor and trauma in a strangely easy and immediate way-- always covered with a coat of trashy drag and, often, all that ground would be covered in the same text, FaceTime moment, IG msg, etc. Although we’ve spent umpteen nights, days, two-show days, etc., making each other shriek backstage, attended countless festivals at the same time with different work, endured weird audiences and weirder reviews, this was our first time collaborating.

Grey Arias is a two-hander we had been waiting two years (ten?) to begin. We were on a tight schedule to complete and open this new work in three weeks and then run for three more; we both had reason to anticipate two years of touring work as a result. It’s a piece about race, gender and trauma through the lens of our shared and idiosyncratic performance modes, hurled against and exploiting the (awful) offerings of the problematic scaffolding of Madame Butterfly.

We had demanded that things around the show’s content be reflected institutionally and in our creative team, and we were working and collaborating in a mode that was deeper, funnier and more dangerous than anything else I’ve done, I think. It felt radical. It was thrilling.

We arrived on March 2, and were postponed and on flights by March 18, a day or two after our first off-book showing. We were already working in the modes and strategies performing artists contrive and develop in order to survive: en route to Melbourne, I had performed another piece in a group evening at On The Boards (Seattle) and then flown to Wellington, NZ to join a Philadelphia-based, queer cabaret cohort, doing yet a different piece of work, and Gateau was arriving, colliding with me, from similar circumstances. We wanted a dramaturg but didn’t have the budget for one from the institution. So, my dear friend John came to Melbourne and they worked with us for a week in exchange for housing and introductions.

I was supposed to finish that and leave for Ireland for 2 different projects via another different gig in London and Croatia. All gone for now. Making all of that happen was just another iteration of the ongoing tetris game of survival--turning one gig into two, letting one paid-for plane fare allow for another gig, maybe this gig could invisibly underwrite this other one nearby; use accommodation money to rent a friend’s place and pocket the rest for your cellphone bill. It’s a grift, isn’t it?

Briefly, tell me about how you got involved in the arts and in your particular practice.

I returned to performing the year I dropped out of college. At the time I thought I was just confused, bored, finding my way. I now know that dropping out was a common response to a (too common) traumatic event. I was wandering around a bit but found myself in the company of two important, life-changing groups: a hippie circus in the mold of Bread & Puppet and Wesleyan dance majors, and both of them changed my life.

In part, I realized that I had massive defensive, protective structures built up around me and something about performing--my attraction to it and my terror of it--made me know that, if I went deep into what it means, I would be able to actually be present in my own life. I don’t know another way I would have found that.

Most of my teachers--whether in improvisational movement, compositional improvisation--taught me to practice being present and lured me away from the kinds of "protections" that had, up until that point, made life seem strange and alien. Deborah Hay’s work involved grounding and practicing presence in different but profound ways that still reside in my body and practice regardless of what I’m practicing.

In a more specific way, what are you practicing? And what are you envisioning?

I lost a year’s actual work in a week, and the loss of that work was followed by the loss of anticipated work. Amidst all the confusion, my first move was to just rest. I hadn’t had nothing to do, for that long, in 20 years--for which I’m both grateful and exhausted! Then I got sick with COVID-19. So, I just concentrated on getting better and not infecting anyone else.

It’s clear to me that I probably won’t be on any kind of stage for at least a year, and that’s how I make my living--in theater spaces filled with people. I have other projects and collaborations that are text-based in some way. So, those are continuing (via Zoom with Ireland, but...).

In the meantime, I am envisioning how to build/create a place for artists on the property I share with my partner of eighteen years (who is also an artist) that imagines a way to offer space and refuge that is accessible, somehow, outside the traditional models of residency applications and in-kind support. I know this is possible, because I feel like I’ve been operating in a way that engages, straddles and avoids traditional models all at once. So that’s what I’m doing until further notice--yardwork and building.

I feel that my movement practice has become task-based and weather related--like some kind of artist-farmer consulting the weather as if it were an Independent Contractors’s Almanac for when to work outside (tear down, build up) and when to work inside (write, meet, consult).

How does your practice and your visioning align with what you most care about?

I have been wanting to create these little out-cropped cabins for years, but I’m always too busy and on the road. I care about making space for other artists and participating in community/chosen family. I care about artist-to-artist strategies that evolve and re-imagine how we exchange support, share a precarious economic landscape, provide for each other and which deploys many of the same strategies I use as an independent artist to something that supports a community.

I don’t know how "legit" it will be because a lot of "legit" places in the world (banks, local permit offices, etc.) don’t view my twenty years of art-making and bill-paying as proof that I can function responsibly or even exist! It’s kind of hilarious. I just don’t look like a real person or thing "on paper" unless it’s in an arts-industry context. So, I’m going the outlaw route to get it done my own way--weather permitting!

How does your practice function within the world we have now?

For now, my practice feels like some iteration that is adjacent to what it used to be--and will be for the foreseeable future--meaning, I am writing and conceiving and collaborating; I am learning to video edit, because I want to and I have the "time," and I want to be in control of if and how my live work translates to digital, if it comes to that (I’m resistant and protective of our live art for now); I’m mentoring some other artists. And, today I’m gonna work outside, building a second DIY structure for someone, an artist, who needs space, refuge, etc. "until the rains come" at 8pm tonight!

As a maker, I’ve always worked in a mode that first asks if an obstacle presented can be a gift or a solution that may be more satisfying than the direct route. For now, that means physical labor and imagining this little artists’ compound. My friend who is a trans production coordinator and lighting designer who is between housing for the month of June is arriving on June 2 to help us build in exchange for housing and (socially distanced) community. So, it’s already starting!

Briefly share one self-care tip that has special meaning to you now.

My self-care involves not hustling gigs online in a panic, meditating, curating my digital interactions carefully and mowing the lawn which is always a very rich creative space for me.

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DISCLAIMER: In addition to my work on InfiniteBody, I serve as Senior Curatorial Director of Gibney. The postings on this site are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views, strategies or opinions of Gibney.

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