Assigned Magician at Birth (best title for a show ever) was showing at Brown’s Mart Studio – the perfect venue with its intimate, cave-like feel.
Entering, we’re invited to select coloured wristbands: GREEN – I’m happy to get up on stage; YELLOW – I’ll talk from the audience; or RED – leave me respectfully alone.
There’s a deliberately shambolic, badly hung black velvet backdrop which I love immediately. So, when Tricksy arrives in trackie daks and pulls out cheap props – along with her hilarious hypnotic death stare – I’m swiftly won over by her comfy, “take me as I am” attitude.
Tricksy blends her comedy with deft magic, beautifully stupid puppetry, self-aware voiceover (kudos to the audio operator), positive trans activism and theatricality. She artfully works the audience, drawing razor sharp analogies with her personal story of transformation from masking to queer femme identity.
This is well crafted theatrical comedy; I wasn’t alone in the audience in feeling safe in the palm of Tricksy’s sleight of hand – feeling provoked, shocked, and moved.
What goes on behind the daggy puppet curtain does not stay behind the daggy puppet curtain as her theme spills over in hilarious, messy, and revelatory ways.
Tricksy knows she is awesome (she tells us). We, the audience, know she is awesome, but day to day in the transphobic world, people feel they have the right to ask Tricksy – “what are you?” She performs a visceral magic trick illustrating the agony of how that challenge feels and attesting to gross expectations which demand Tricksy explain and justify herself.
In her final act, Tricksy takes a microphone and a seat and sets out to cure transphobia in 60 seconds via a monologue drawing the not so ironic connections between transphobia, magic and Harry Potter. The monologue could benefit from editing and clarity as it was slightly convoluted and not as pithy as earlier material. Her rap requires sharper diction or a fractionally slower pace so we can understand every vital word.
But don’t let that put you off – this show and as we know, Tricksy – is awesome.
A witty, skilful and often vulnerable host, Tricksy speaks about being brave. She makes her audience feel safe, which is brave, and with every performance puts herself at risk due to the underlying activism of her playful interactions with us. Tricksy nails how programmed associations of gender and identity are an illusion themselves – falsities we squeeze into to fit in the binary box.
The imagery, message and craft of Assigned Magician at Birth linger; they left me with “Tricksy perspective” – thoughtful in new ways. Tricksy’s magic as a performer is in how she effectively reveals the deception as its own illusion.
BY TANIA LIEMAN