why don't you do right
2019
a long-durational one-on-one performance (3h 30min)
concept, performance, text, costume, make-up and set design
Valerie Reding
assistance and performance
Nico Dubosson as Jessica Rabbit
pictures
Rocco Schira
music
Tyler Holmes
dramaturgical advisor
Marc Streit
technical support
David Baumgartner
venue
Last Tango, Zurich, within the zürich moves! festival curated by Marc Streit
“We’re born naked, everything else is drag”, RuPaul said and then argued, why no cis- nor trans-women should be allowed on Drag Race, because “drag loses its sense of danger and its sense of irony once it’s not men doing it”. When fem bodies perform femininity, who is to say who is paying tribute to whom, who has the right to subverting what and ultimately: who is really (re-)appropriating femininity from whom?
The performance takes place in a small, intimate space. The performer is sitting at a table with a mirror, the back facing to the door, transforming herself for the entire duration of the performance into a fish creature - a fishy queen.
Outside of the box, Jessica Rabbit is welcoming the visitors, letting them peek into the room through a small hole in the door.
One by one, the visitors can enter the room, sit down next to the performer, watch the transformation while listening to a series of intimate personal stories about the performer's experience with femininity, its artificiality and drag, about snakes and apples and blue nail polish.