Review of play: Transpose BURN: Pit Party

CN Lester’s annual ‘pit party’ returns to the Barbican for its ?5th year. Last year the theme was ‘joy’, this year it’s ‘burn’.

The blurby bit

Acclaimed performer and musician Dani Dinger curates the latest edition of this revelatory evening of performance and live music by trailblazing trans artists from the UK and Turkey.

Taking place in Pride month, this year’s Pit Party line-up will feature explosive performances from artists including anarchist poet Kell w Farshéa, DJ Ifeoluwa and subversive drag artist i-Gemini. Plus, Erkan Affan invites Akış Ka, Mustafa Kınalı (aka Mustkika) and Kübra Uzun as part of their MOU7I6 collective.

Transpose was founded by artistic director CN Lester in 2011 and has spent over a decade celebrating, promoting, and platforming the wide-ranging talents of the UK trans community. This edition is curated and directed by performer, activist and musician Dani Dinger and will explore the building blocks of a shared culture, trans identities and offers a direct challenge to the status quo. In the words of CN, it’s a space in which ‘we can show you our vulnerabilities, our strengths, and – most of all – our authenticity.’

From the Barbican website

The day before

The day before I attended the event, the Barbican helpfully informed its patrons that we could expect a ‘blockhead act’, whereby someone would hammer a nail into their own sinus, i.e. slightly short of a self-lobotomy, but that we needed to wear masks because the performers were ‘extremely vulnerable’ to COVID. It seemed a bit tardy to inform an audience it was going to be exposed to a random act of sadomasochism with just 24 hours notice, but there you go, no one dare turn down the request of the trans.

This a genuine note I have received today about a performance I am going to tomorrow.

Someone is going hammer a nail into their own nasal cavity … please wear your masks because the performers are extremely vulnerable. pic.twitter.com/7GLqm8guQp

— The Lies They Tell (@sarahstuartxx) June 16, 2023

Like last year, the Barbican has gone to the trouble of compiling a digital programme for the event, replete with full biographies of the artistes we’ve never heard of, nor will again, and vox pop type interviews with them, where we learn precisely nothing about them that we couldn’t already guess.

I won’t go too much into who is who, as frankly they are all out-and-out attention seekers, though it is worth looking a bit at this year’s curator and director, Dani Dinger, who looks not unlike the love child of Sid Snot and Thumbelina.

Okay, that’s enough of Dinger for you. Anyway, with that and the promised nailing, I was quite quite excited beforehand, I can tell you.

Over explaining everything aka The Introduction

On arrival at the event we were given a programme of what would happen, as in a description of every single segment and how long it would last. But Dinger, wearing horns and tiny leotard (she just looked like a very hairy sprite), went much further than that, explaining to us that throughout the show she would be providing a live audio description for everything happening on stage.  There would also be live captioning, which was on the screen behind, this would appear ‘at the top of the screen’ and that we should ‘watch out for that’.  

The audience was so compliant when asked to don the masks nearly everyone did so, including myself, which turned out to be a godsend because I did a lot of yawning and laughing in the wrong places and sat quite near the front.

The cast also had their very own support worker, dragged uncomfortably out on stage, wearing heavy Zorro-style eye shadow.  When we were informed she had no eyebrows, she looked down at her feet.  This is who we were to approach if we needed to be taken to the safe space set aside for us (last year that was located within the Pit itself, but now it has mysteriously moved elsewhere, proving that someone put their foot down on one demand, at least).   

Providing the BSL interpretation, even though the maximum audience for the venue must be about a hundred (there are only about 80,000 BSL speakers in the UK) was Max.  Max is a pretty young woman in a wheelchair, with perfectly applied make-up.  And beard.   Max was wearing a ‘crocodile skin vegan harness’.

The cast were also bought out onto stage, motley crue that they were, for Dinger to describe one by one, pronouns and physical description.  For example, Kell, the fat white straight man was described as having a ‘big belly with small tits’ (or how about ‘no tits’?).  Dinger also gave a run down of the things we might see (if we were able to stay in the room), with the nail in the nose and a cigarette being put out on the tongue high on the list of things which might upset us.  After the introduction one felt as if it was hardly worth staying, since everything had been revealed and no one allowed to reveal their character to us through performance. The show was also being filmed and I suspect, like the Barbican did last year, it will be made public shortly, so we can all have a good laugh.  

Anyway the list turned out to be useful for me:  

Kell – poem ‘Fucking Straights’

Kell, a middle aged man with a fetish for women’s clothing, performed his poem about his 7 inch piece of wood being sucked off by a young submissive trans-identified female, replete with description of choking and tears.  He referred to his penis as his ‘woman dick’ and made general noises about how hard life was for him.  He also did a ‘moving’ poem about Brianna Ghey.  Kell likes smearing lipstick across his face and his bow legs shook as he read.  

Kubra – Song choice game

Not so much of a game as some lame audience participation.  ‘Close your eyes and think of a song which is important to you,’ cooed Kubra, wearing a skirt as it it were a dress, held up over his large prosthetic breasts.  Funnily enough all the people picked were somehow known to one of the performers, which either speaks to the nature of how incestuous the audience was, or favouritism. 

Akis Ka – Monologue with fabric frame

This segment over 15 minutes long and boy did it feel like it.  Akis’s story is essentially that of what it is like to be a very unattractive gay man on the gay scene.  He isn’t ‘trans’ in any sense of the word that most people would understand.  He spent the entire time showing off his admittedly rather ugly body, wearing just a small pair of skin-coloured pants.  Tiny cock too, which can’t help.  

Ifeoluwa – Church music mix

‘Ifeoluwa goes over to the laptop and turns it on,’ was the dramatic start, narrated by Dinger.  Ifeoluwa then walked on and off stage collecting bit and pieces, a candle, a bible, a white bowl, all tediously narrated by Dinger (‘they walk off stage, they walk back on stage’).  

Mustkika – Film and transformation dance

Mustkika wins the competition as most talented member of the crew, as he can (sort of) belly dance and made the artistic decision not to allow Dinger to narrate his every move.  Like Akis, he is trans in the sense that he is a gay man who wants to be seen as a bit different, and whereas Akis is retreating into trans because of his own ugliness, Kika was rather beautiful and appeared to want that recognised.  

i-Gemini – Origins of Love

Got the biggest cheers of the night, mainly because her friends were in, I suspect.  A look on her face betrayed it was because she thought she was ‘it’, poor deluded thing.  i-Gemini is a trans-identified female with he/him pronouns.  Dinger informed us that she hadn’t had top surgery but was trying to recreate that look for us that night.  She’s so obese she looked as if she had her eyes squeezed shut.  In fact, I thought she was going to be the token blind person, like they had last year, especially the way she lolloped around on stage, in what she thought was dance.  She lip synced to a pop song and got noticeably excited miming the chorus.  Chronic.

i-Gemini, Kubra, CN Lester and Dinger

i-Gemini (a woman) and Cobra (a man) sang a love song to each other.  How queer?  No lip syncing this time. Sadly.  CN Lester played the electric piano letting out a few bum notes here and there and Dinger did the drums, just a little bit out of time.  According to the programme notes that was eight minutes long.  My face.

Monsters return sequence

The crew came back onto stage to be applauded and posture in front of us.  

Welcome back after interval

In yet another introduction, Dinger needlessly explained to us that it was the second part, that there was live captioning, etc and reminded us again that we were about to see the nail up the nose. But we learnt a new fact: i-Gemini could do these things because she’d been to circus school.  

i-Gemini – Fire and Sideshow 

With precisely no drama whatsoever, not even proving to the audience that the things she was putting up her nose really were nails, which is a basic standard for these types of performance, i-Gemini knocked a nail up her nose.  When she took it out, she licked it, so, to be fair, that was quite disgusting.  She also bilaterally stuck a pair of scissors up her nose and did some matter-of-fact fire-eating.  She also swizzled fire sticks up her legs.  Plus the cigarette stub trick.  Amazing.  We’ll be seeing her on Britain’s Got Talent very soon, the rejects’ section.  

Kell – Poems

Kell came back to do some more poems what he wrote.  This included letting us know again that he identifies as non-binary and is all oppressed and stuff as a trans woman. Also, he is 57 years old and on oestrogen and on the NHS waiting list to get his ‘sex tube’ cut off.  He also did a poem about what it was like to go on marches, making it sound like he’d never been on a march before, ridiculously evoking the ‘east wind’, though at his size he probably does have IBS.  One thing he did correctly assert though was that there was a connection between being fat and thick.  

Mustkika – Song with dancing

Sang a song quite well and more belly dancing.  Desperate to be seen as sexy.  

Ifeoluwa – Stillness with mix and trays

Another ‘mime’ from Ifeloluwa.  This time we saw her forgetting even to act out the actions that Dinger narrated and spent the entire time sat behind a table looking bored.  

i-Gemini – Ballgown dance

Was back again to do some more lip syncing.  Dinger told us that the song she was dancing to summed up her experience of coming out.  That song was the rather excellent Take Me to Church by Hozier, which is a song about a passionate love affair, and rather sums up the adolescent misunderstanding that i-Gemini has.  

Akis – Monologue with fluid

We were warned that fluid was going to be spit out everywhere.  So much for the COVID contamination worries for the performers.  Akis did another long tedious monologue about how he tried to be a bear but even the bears didn’t want him.  And so he tried trans and found that fitted.  He also taken a place on the Istanbul Pride committee, so now has a bit of political power too.  The fluid spitting was no more than a copy of what Franko B did back in the day, but where Franko B did it with his own blood, Akis had to make do with food colouring.  Akis choke and spat the fluid all around his plastic sheet area and flailed his limbs around at the end without even as much poise as a toddler having a tantrum, revealing to us that he likes humiliation and, presumably, asphyxiation.   

Kubra and CN – Dream a Little Dream

This wasn’t so bad.  CN returned to do her so-so piano playing but did sing quite nicely.  Nice song too.  All the performers came out to sway about clumsily but together.

Final word

Of course, throughout the entire show the audience roared its approval, as if they thought they were seeing some really important.  Someone could have said something more about the oppressive Turkish government under Erdogan, but I suspect that would have just shown up the freedoms we have in the UK. At the end there was a standing ovation.  No doubt Transpose will be back next year, but I won’t be going.  

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