“Surgemony I: Loving the Alien” debuted at the 2005 Lewis and Clark College Gender Symposium in Portland, Oregon and was then manifest at the Performance Studies International (PSi) conference, Becoming Uncomfortable, at Brown University.

“Loving the Alien” uses a spoken text, auditory sculpture, video, and live action, with two performers.

In performances leading up to this series, we’ve taken on issues of violence in the media towards transpeople and even paralleling the medical and surgical experience of sexual reassignment with the biblical Stations of the Cross. In this piece we will be looking at the process of transitioning on a more intimate level, which is, at the same time, investigates the universal search for identity.

Through text, action and surgical video, we created a snapshot of our lives leading up to the surgery, and the fears and reactions from our friends and family.