Trans continental journey
Belgian performer's gender reassignment story revisited
Published January 10, 2013 by Zoltan Varadi in Theatre
http://www.ffwdweekly.com/article/arts/theatre/trans-continental-journey-10270/ (http://www.ffwdweekly.com/article/arts/theatre/trans-continental-journey-10270/)
Vanessa Van Durme says she hopes her one-woman play, Look Mummy, I'm Dancing — an autobiographical monologue about her experiences as a transsexual — will break down prejudices, but she bristles at the suggestion that the performance is charged with a political agenda.
"No, no — I'm not that kind of girl," she laughs. "No, no, no. I tell my story with a lot of humour.
"I was just a person born in the wrong body and I did something — I had a sex change — and I'm okay now," she continues. "I've never asked people to accept me or understand me, because it's difficult to understand. I just ask [them] to respect me for the person I am and for what I am. And they do. I'm not complaining."
The monologue is based on Van Durme's memoir of the same name, which she wrote concurrently with the stage adaptation ("I thought immediately — it's a play, it's a play," she recalls), and it's quite the story. She was born a boy in Ghent, Belgium in 1948 and later studied dramatic art at the conservatory there, beginning a promising career in the theatre. She abandoned the stage for a long spell though, following the gender reassignment surgery she underwent in 1975.