Transgender character grounds The New Theatre Project's 'Fugue'
Shared tragic event launches search for identity
By Bridgette M. Redman
Originally printed 12/1/2011 (Issue 1948 - Between The Lines News)
http://www.pridesource.com/article.html?article=50415In Audra Lord's play about memory and identity, only one character is fully comfortable with herself and who she is: Princess Stephanie, a transgendered rock singer who doesn't need a life history to fit into her own skin.
The four main characters in "Fugue," a new work that is premiering at The New Theater Project in Ypsilanti, have all suffered severe memory loss. Throughout the course of the play they learn their names, and bits of their histories float back into their awareness.
Each character responds in a different way to the memory loss, some with anger and frustration at not knowing who they are, others with excitement about what they can now create out of their lives. It is only Stephanie who lives completely in the present, fully aware that she is transgendered even while lacking knowledge of any of her past or of the people who were once in her life.
