Writer Resumé

Books

Two Truths and a Lie: A Memoir written and performed. Homofactus Press. Ypsilanti, 2008.

Finalist for 2008 Lambda Literary Awards in Drama and Transgender categories -

2009 American Library Association Rainbow List -

Plays

"The Spitting Game" with Lauren Feldman, Sigrid Gilmer, Dan LeFranc, Nicholas Surbey and Steve Yockey. Full length. Workshopped at Theatre Emory Brave New Works 2009.

"School's Out" with Mark Blankenship. Full length. Workshopped at Theatre Emory Brave New Works 2005.

"Turn Me On" with Sheri Mann Stewart. Full length. Workshopped at Theatre Emory Brave New Works 2004.

“Underground Transit” in National Transgender Theater Festival Reader, New York: Renegade, 2003. 

Excerpt from “Underground Transit” in [Becoming] Young ideas on gender, identity, and sexuality. Diane Anderson-Minshall and Gina Devries, Eds. Exlibris Corporation, July, 2004.

Essays

"The Wrong Body" Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation. S. Bear Bergman and Kate Bornstein, Eds. Seal Press. New York, 2010.

2011 Lambda Literary Awards for Transgender Nonfiction and LGBT Anthology -

“Are We There Yet? On Being and Becoming a Transgender Performance Artist” Self Organizing Men. Jay Sennet, 

Ed. Homofactus Press. Ypsilanti, 2006.

"Coming of Age—Still Performance / Manifesto" Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory, #28. New York University, New York 2004.

Articles

“Top 10 Queer Music Moments” list contributor, Out Magazine, July issue, 2008.

“Letter to the Editor” Out Magazine, April issue, 2008.

“When I First Knew” Out Magazine, March issue, 2008.

“I am the Pride Sucker.” Atlanta Creative Loafing, June 20, 2003.

Copy

Didn't It Feel Kinder by Amy Ray (Daemon Records, 2008). Promotional copy for publicity and sales.

Review of Two Truths and a Lie

Find the full review here (PDF)  

Excerpts:

"Schofield stands out among trans performance artists in that he successfully enlightens as well as truly entertains."

"Two Truths and a Lie provides a genuine alternative to mainstream trans memoir narratives, not only for its unique format but also for the educational information provided, the breadth of experiences detailed and the particularly young age at which the author's transition narrative takes place."

"The three performance pieces work well as a book, coming to life through vivid descriptions. The experience feels like a roller-coaster ride, and once picked up, the book is impossible to put down. Having seen one of the plays live, and now having read the entire collections, I wonder if maybe the written version is preferable for just one, important reason. As a reader, one can relish the work;s true poetic beauty and structure, savouring the author's artful use of metaphor and rhythm, while Schofield's live act simply whizzes by."

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation Book Review | Queer Fat Femme

October 6th, 2010 

Oh friends, I’ve been gone so long and yet not gone anywhere but inside my big, sweet heart and head. I’m doing The Artist’s Way and life coaching and as Lynnee Breedlove, my coach, says “Filling the well. Putting gas in the tank.” I’m still brewing some interesting mind blowing blog topics, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I have a book to recommend to keep you company! It’s Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation edited by Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. Just released on Seal Press it is extremely accessible and interesting.

The term “anthology” makes me think of things that are stuffy or academic. However, this reads more like an extremely well-edited and organized zine, which I believe is to its credit. Transgressing the anthology format, as the editors and authors transgress gender and sexuality. Some of the contributions are only a couple of pages and pack just as much punch as their lengthier counterparts. I love having something to read that can fit well between subway stops, which is where most of my reading takes place.

Kate, reading at Rebel Cupcake: Sci Fi Cupcakes.

The editors use an AOL Instant Messenger format (old school!) for the introduction, intermission and conclusion of the book. They also discuss the topic of the next genderation, usage of the controversial terms “tranny” and “cisgender” and the reactions to both Kate and Bear when they came out as transgender during different genderations. I love that they’re not afraid to say what they think in this conversation and they really go there.

I also loved the organization of the anthology. I love systems of creative organization and this just tickled me.
Part One: Do I look like an outlaw to you?
Part Two: Being reconfigured is not the same as being reimagined.
Part Three: …which is why I’m as cute as I happen to be.
Part Four: It might not be a picnic but there’s a great buffet.
Part Five: And still we rise.

S. Bear Bergman hasn’t performed at Rebel Cupcake (yet!).

Several of the contributions resonated with me, including a touching account of “The Manly Art of Pregnancy” by J Wallace, which did a lot to counter the version of the “Pregnant Man” propagated in the media a couple of years ago.

I really loved the comic Transcension by Katie Diamond and Johnny Blazes. I love words and their application of language theory to finding a place within and without identity labels was extremely well-illustrated, both in text and pictures.

Scott Turner Schofield’s intense and powerful “The Wrong Body” has been swimming around in my head for weeks. It’s such a stunning and succinct narrative of why, as a fetus, he chose to be born a baby girl. “I saw that I would have time to appreciate my journey, with the head to understand it as a gift and the heart to achieve my whole self through all the trials it takes.”

And there are contributions to this anthology by trans allies as well. The piece that had me crying on the subway was Fran Varian’s “Daddy Gets the Big Piece of Chicken.” She weaves a gorgeous comparison to preparations for a date with her gender-variant lover and her working class family’s gender roles.

Me, giving Kate an umbrella sheathed like sword
with a sword handle fromSITE Design at Rebel Cupcake.

She shows the beautiful nuance of the unspoken dance between gendered energy and the ways in which we care for each other in our gender queer (and queer in other ways) relationships. “You walk on the outside, closest to the street. You do this because we are moving targets, even in San Francisco. You do this because you have been attacked for the masculinity you have constructed and because I am precious to you.” How lucky to have someone tell you how precious you are to them; luckier still to have someone show you how precious you are.

While I always want you, precious reader, to shop at a local feminist bookstore, if you buy Gender Outlaws: TNG on the internet and clickie through my link I get a tiny referral fee and it goes to buy me books and other delights.

NYC Readers! There is a reading at Bluestockings by some of the authors of Gender Outlaws: TNG (including Kate!) on October 8!

Rebel Cupcake photos by Nogga Schwartz for Rebel Cupcake.

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation Book Review | Queer Fat Femme:

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Debutante Balls Review

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Southern skin

Posted: Wednesday, January 13, 2010 12:00 am

By Dawnell Smith

The one-man show “Debutante Balls” at Out North this weekend uses the tradition of young debutants coming out in Southern society as a narrative that parallels the artist’s own coming out as a lesbian, radical feminist, transgender man and even middle class performance artist.

Scott Turner Schofield’s clever, funny performance examines the variations of wearing and living in one’s own skin. He ultimately wants everyone to enjoy a gala ball celebrating their coming out as whoever they are, but he has a good time unearthing the hilarity, dogma and even beauty of the conventional debutante ball of the South in the meantime.

After all, he grew up as a girl expected to help out with all her girlfriend’s debutante balls, and that freedom allowed him to explore his own skins and coming out.

Schofield grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, and now describes himself as “a lesbian turned straight guy who is usually taken for a gay teenager.” It’s easy to see why. He’s capable of wearing all these skins, yet is poignantly only comfortable in one of them.

In his last show at Out North in 2008, he focused on the legal, medical and social elements of changing gender in “Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps.”

He mines this material in “Debutante,” but also outside live theater. This month he vied for the top spot in an ABC reality show called “Conveyor Belt of Love,” (see Flashlight, page 6) in which 30 guys on a conveyor belt were given 60 seconds to woo five beauties with ample cleavage. Schofield made it to the final four – and, in a sense, the show’s set-up plays into his ongoing study of tradition and assumption, identity and acceptance, and the simplicity and complexity of human beings.

As for “Debutante,” well touches on many of these ideas through a delirious story of his coming out as a lesbian teenager and later as a transgender man. In a way, you could say that “coming out” is a performance artist’s mission, and Schofield does it admirably. His personable, accessible performance makes his many coming out stories real and moving, and though he sometimes points the spotlight at his audience, he never betrays them or puts them in artificially uncomfortable situations.

Theatrically, he leans on several props to link his many ideas. The set consists of a platform with a gown poised on a simple framework. He uses the gown in many ways: he hides behind it, uses it as a character, climbs under and through it, and even slides his arms into its sleeves until, finally, he dismantles its framework altogether. Representing everything from concealment to truth, the gown provides a visual conduit to his life experience. Its simplicity belies its depth.

On a more abstract level, he brings in sweet tea as the presumed beverage of the South, just as “whiteness” and “heterosexuality” make up the backdrop of life where he grew up.

Eventually, he points out, those with life experiences outside these presumptions need to decide whether to “spit or swallow.”

This notion of either being swallowed whole or having to spit oneself out returns again and again alongside the tea, the gown and the pragmatic truth that the invisibility of queer life can sometimes be an asset. To understand how and why, you’ll need to see the show yourself.

As it happens, Schofield’s Out North performances culminate his six-week stint as Out North’s guest artistic director. He has taken the show all over the country for years, and his timing and pacing show it.

“Debutante” never lulls, yet offers the audience plenty of time for contemplation, and though the material may seem outside of “normal” to some folks, it really just centers on an age-old message told in parables, folk tales, poems, films, songs and books: Just be yourself.

Soon, Schofield will do just that in New York City, where he will study and write.

Debutante Balls will show tonight through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets cost $20 atwww.outnorth.org, 279-8099 or at the door. Find out more about Schofield’s work atwww.undergroundtransit.com.

Southern skin - Anchorage Press: Arts:

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Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps review

The Rice Thresher > Entertainment

Thoughts on Schofield's gender-bending Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps

By Andi Gomez

Published: Thursday, February 26, 2009

Updated: Sunday, March 20, 2011 18:03

Nudity, beer chugging, acrobatics and an explosive, menstrual pad-launching rendition of Hedwig and the Angry Inch's "The Origin of Love" - sound interested?Everyone should be. If more people started going to shows like Scott Turner Schofield's Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps, the world would be a more accepting place. We would see a society in which we seek to understand rather than to exile, and more people would be prepared to accept and help fellow human beings in their struggle to figure out who they are, regardless of sexuality and gender differentials.

Schofield is an award-winning performer and transgender activist who has toured around the country since 2001. He has performed two other solo acts: Debutante Balls and Underground Transit, and his book Two Truths and a Lie has been nominated for two Lambda Literary Awards. Last weekend he was at Houston's DiverseWorks with his newest performance, Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps.

As I drove over to DiverseWorks last Saturday, I had no idea what I was about to experience. I had no idea I would be watching a woman-turned-man get naked in front of me on a stage within the first 10 minutes of a performance. (He only stayed naked for about five minutes.) 

I like to think of myself as a very accepting person, but I'm ashamed to admit that before this show, that mental image may have made me squirm a little.

But after it happened, I was actually really surprised by how, well, natural it felt.

Hilarious, emotional, explosive - and just a bit heart-wrenching at times - Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps is so successful because you not only feel like you are witnessing someone's private transgender experience, but you actually feel like you are inside of the experience with him.

The key to the success of this performance is its intimacy. From the set to the audience participation to the conversational ingenuity of Scott's portrayal, everything about his performance invites the audience into his world while forcing us to question the mainstream culture that surrounds us.

I'll start with the set, because it strikes me as magnificently effective at constructing an atmosphere in which the audience feels like it's being let in on something personal. Simplistic but intimate, a stripped mattress lays on the floor and above it hangs what looks like a crimson cloth cocoon. Three triangular white drapes hang at the foot and sides of the bed; a screen is placed at the back. The audience sits on three sides of the stage.

All of a sudden the cocoon starts to move and Scott comes out, weaving his body up and down and around the symbolically blood-colored cloth that now flows to the center of the mattress as a recording of his voice narrates the moment of his conception. Finally, Scott jumped to the floor. He addressed the audience, throwing the white drapes to all three sides of the stage, bringing everyone in the room into what he calls his fort, much like the ones he used to make as a kid. He asked the people in the last rows to pull the drapes back so that they form a straight line, cracking a joke about how "tight and straight is what we value in this culture." He explained that the fort is a safe place to sexually explore and then promises to the audience that "once we're in the fort, I'll tell you everything."

The title Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps refers to a decoder ring that is projected onto the screen at the head of the bed. Something like a pie chart, each chunk of the decoder ring is identified with a number and holds heavily-loaded word such as "butch," "gay," "stealth" and "feminine." Scott explained that when combined, these numbers and their words tell about 127 little bits of his identity. He has a story for each one. However, the title is slightly deceptive, as he does not have time to tell 127 stories but rather has the audience request certain numbers and he responds with many stories as he can within his hour on stage.

Scott's stories range from downright comical, to shockingly painful, to thought provoking. Story 47, for example, combines the words "man" and "stealth" and he muses over what penis he would have genetically inherited had he been born with a male body. Then he pulls out three soft packs (attachable penises that create a bulge under pants) of different sizes. He begins to walk around the stage, juggling the three penises. He stops, turns to the crowd, gives a mischievous smile and states, "I'd be a shower, not a grower."

Towards the end of the show this character, who for the past hour had awed the audience with his charisma and humor in discussing such a complicated topic, reveals his insecure side. We hear some recordings of a phone conversation in which a friend of Scott's explains to him that it is all right to not know how to be a man because the "idea of being a man is just an idea" and that "you happen any way you choose." The room gets a little darker and Scott quietly explains, "My body tells my truth. but sometimes the story is so big I have to lie just a little, and it hurts just a little." We get an image of him sitting in the dark with a syringe, "morphing" himself as he continues to describe the concern he has to live with: that the hormone injections he takes regularly may have negative health implications in the future.

The show closes on an open-ended note, as he says, "I haven't figured out the end. . All I can do is be a man, and know when to leave."

I can't express the impact this performance had on me. It has certainly made me ponder what constitutes gender, acceptance and how the constant evolution of the individual in personal and public spaces is something that we all go through in our own ways, yet we tend to shut off the process of understanding evolutions different from our own.Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps was only showing in Houston last weekend, so I wish I could have shared this earlier, but I recommend that you go see him if you ever get the chance.


Andi Gomez is a Lovett College Senior.

Thoughts on Schofield's gender-bending Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps - Entertainment - The Rice Thresher - Rice University

ALA Releases 2009 Rainbow List

If you’re in need of some well-written and wonderfully illustrated gay-themed books, you’re in luck. The Rainbow Project has just released the 2009 Rainbow List, featuring books with authentic and significant gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered/questioning (GLBTQ) content for youth from birth through age 18.

This year’s bibliography includes 34 titles, published in the last 18 months, and represents a broad range of GLBTQ experiences. Most titles are recommended for teens, including four titles published for adults. Two picture books, two middle-grade novels, two graphic books (a novel and a biography), one short story collection, one translation, and five nonfiction titles are also represented.

The titles on this year’s list offer young readers rich characters and portray the full spectrum of youth and family experiences. Primary characters are gay, lesbian, transgendered, questioning, and straight, and they grapple with varying degrees of acceptance and prejudice from their friends, families, and communities, as well as from themselves.

Four titles stood out to the selection committee as especially deserving of recognition for their characters, stories, quality of writing, and illustration:

Down to the Bone (HarperTeen, 2008) by Mayra Lazara Dole; 10,000 Dresses(Seven Stories Press, 2008), by Marcus Ewert and illustrated by Rex Ray; Last Exit to Normal (Knopf, 2008) by Michael Harmon; and Skim (Groundwood, 2008) by Mariko Tamaki with art by Jillian Tamaki.

The list is a joint partnership between the American Library Association’s Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table and Social Responsibilities Round Table.

More information can be found on the Rainbow Project blog, MySpace, and Facebook (search: rainbow list).

Rainbow Final List – 2009 Picture Books 
Uncle Bobby’s Wedding.(Putnam) by Sarah Brannen
10,000 Dresses (Seven Stories Press) by Marcus Ewert

Middle/Early Young Adult Fiction 
No Castles Here (Random) by A.C.E. Bauer
After Tupac & D Foster (Putnam) by Jacqueline Woodson

Young Adult Fiction 
Girl from Mars (Groundwood) by Shelley Tanaka.
Debbie Harry Sings in French (Holt) by Meagan Brothers
Naomi and Ely’s No Kiss List (Knopf) by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Down to the Bone (HarperTeen) by Mayra Lazara Dole
Big Big Sky (Red Deep Press) by Kristyn Dunnion
Suicide Notes (HarperTeen) by Michael Thomas Ford
Fancy White Trash (Viking) by Marjetta Geerling
Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film About The Grapes of Wrath (Bloomsbury) by Steven Goldman
Map of Ireland (Scribner) by Stephanie Grant
Nothing Pink (Front St) by Mark Hardy
Last Exit to Normal (Knopf) by Michael Harmon
M+O 4EVR (Houghton) by Tonya Cherie Hegamin
Another Kind of Cowboy (HarperTeen) by Susan Juby
My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, & Fenway Park (Dial) by Steve Kluger
Out of the Pocket (Dutton) by Bill Konigsberg
Gravity (Orca) by Leanne Lieberman
My Tiki Girl (Dutton) by Jennifer McMahon
Belinda’s Obsession (Lobster) by Patricia Penny
Sword Masters (Dragon Moon) by Selina Rosen
Crossover (Orca) by Jeff Rud
Entrances and Exits (Simon Pulse) by Paul Ruditis
Skim (Groundwood) by Mariko Tamaki and Jillian Tamaki
What They Always Tell Us (Delacorte) by Martin Wilson
Love & Lies: Marisol’s Story (S & S) by Ellen Wittlinger

Nonfiction 
Gay America: Struggle for Equality (Abrams/Amulet) by Linas Alsenas
The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy (St. Martin’s) by Robert Leleux
Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster (DaCapo) by Joanne Passet
Two Truths and a Lie: A Memoir (Homofactus) by Scott Turner Schofield

Awkward and Definition (S & S) by Ariel Schrag

Writing Sample: Dialogue

"Sleep While I Drive"

10 minute play

2 characters

1 male (race/ethnicity unspecified - "whiteboy" reference can be an insult)

1 female (Native American and/or Latina heritage)

Jim and Ana take a tour into the unknown in a 1959 Cadillac, and talk sex, porn, love, and sociology.

Commissioned by and workshopped at the 2009 Brave New Works Festival, Emory University.

You Can Sleep While I Drive

'Becoming a Man' all powerful | ajc.com

photo by Alain Fonterey

By Wendell Brock

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

THEATER REVIEW

“Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps”

Grade: A-

8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. 5 p.m. Sunday. Through Sunday. 7 Stages. 1105 Euclid Ave., Little Five Points. 404-523-7647, 7stages.org. (Note: Features adult material and full-frontal nudity.)

Bottom line: One of the year’s most essential theater experiences.

As a camp counselor in Costa Rica a few years ago, Scott Turner Schofield suffered a serious blow to the head that required a detailed medical examination and extended hospital stay. When his doctor realized the athletic young man had the body of a woman, he thought the kid was just confused.

“Son, you have a terrible brain injury,” the doctor said sternly.

After having a heart-to-heart conversation with another doctor about his quest for a sex change, Schofield was informed that Costa Rica is the cosmetic-surgery capital of Latin America. And the surgeon offered to remove his breasts on the spot.

In his autobiographical solo performance piece, “Becoming a Man in 127 Easy Steps,” the Atlanta-based artist describes the comic absurdity, social stigma, emotional imperilment and sheer-naked vulnerability of the transgendered life.

Suggesting an image of physical rebirth, the show begins with Schofield emerging from a cocoon of billowing fabric suspended from the ceiling. After a precarious aerial ballet, he bounds to the floor like some newly minted Peter Pan and describes the messy medical details of getting a sex change. In a metaphorical gesture that signifies the total soul-baring to come, he disrobes completely and tapes a sign to the set that says: “No secrets allowed.”

By turns fiercely comic, brutally honest and deeply moving, the show is beautifully written, choreographed and performed. Like some sexually ambiguous Scheherazade, Schofield unspools the action as a series of stories chosen willy-nilly by the audience from a list of numbers assigned to various words (“queer,” “straight,” “butch,” “femme,” etc.). Directed by Steve Bailey, the intermissionless 75-minute piece feels so artfully balanced and delicately nuanced that it makes you wonder if Schofield really has 127 stories in his repertoire or is just pretending.

From the little girl forced to wear a Minnie Mouse costume when she really wanted to be Mickey to the young man standing in front of a Texas judge begging to have his sexual designation legally changed, from the complicated family relationships to the three suicide attempts, “Becoming a Man” is raw, urgent and honest. Much to his credit, Schofield comes across more as a lovable neighborhood kid bursting with energy and insight than an agenda-waving political zealot.

With great humor and pathos, he describes his alienation from his biological father, relates his adventures as a baby sitter and describes his close calls with Atlanta cops and skinny-dipping European males. During the performance, he sings “Like a Bird on a Wire” while tethered to a swinging rope, and has a live telephone conversation with his stepfather.

In a democracy that boasts great freedom of expression, transgenderism may be the final frontier of sexual politics. Going from female to male can’t be an easy process, and this 27-year-old artist never pretends that is. Schofield —- winner of an off-Broadway Fruitie Award and a prestigious Princess Grace Foundation acting fellowship —-says the titular number 127 is part of his Social Security number, and jokes that he wants someone to steal his identity. As it turns out, the man born as Katie Lauren Kilborn has sculpted a personality so unique that it would be virtually impossible to replicate.

Originally posted here: 'Becoming a Man' all powerful | ajc.com
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Two Truths and a Lie On Sale Now!

HomofactusPRESS

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE

Scott Turner Schofield

15.00 BUY NOW 

Two Truths and a Lie is a memoir passing as three solo plays written and performed by Scott Turner Schofield.

Details

Two Truths and a Lie is a memoir passing as three solo plays written and performed by Scott Turner Schofield. From inside his young life on the Homecoming Court and Debutante Ball circuit (in a dress), armed with only a decoder ring and a gifted tongue, Schofield comes out with truly unbelievable stories of a body in search of an identity. By turns slapstick and slap-to-the-face, this drama invites audiences and readers to explore gender, sex, sexuality, and self in their own first person.

“I am completely mad for Scott Turner Schofield. He is a thrilling, compelling, and downright charming writer and performance artist. And handsome.Did I mention handsome? And smart. Buy this book. Read it.” - Kate Bornstein, Hello, Cruel World

“Scott is amazingly clever at drawing people into his perspective with a light and engaging style, yet his work really challenges us to rethink our set perspectives on gender.” - Robert Rosenberg, Director of Before Stonewall

ISBN

978-0978597320

Publication Year

2008

Binding

Perfect

Pages

128

Format

Text with 6 photographs

Retail Price

US $15.00 \ UK £8.00 \ EURO €12.00 \ CAN $15.75 \ AUS $17.00

Designer

Cover: Scott Turner Schofield/Book: Jay Sennett

Author Details

Scott Turner Schofield began his performance art career working as a research assistant to Holly Hughes and Carmelita Tropicana at the WOW Café in 2000. Now a full-time performance artist, educator, and producer, he tours his acclaimed one-trannie shows, “Underground Transit”, “Debutante Balls”, and “Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps” nationwide.

Editor's Pick in Time Out New York!

Fancy that

Scott Turner Schofield returns to the cotillion for Debutante Balls.

By Mark BlankenshipWed Jul 11 2007

SKIRT THE ISSUE Stradling genders onstage was crucial to Schofield's vision.

Playwright and performance artist Scott Turner Schofield has come out in at least five different ways. When he was in high school—and was still living as a woman named Katie—he came out as a lesbian. In college at Atlanta's Emory University (where he and this writer were classmates), he came out as transgender. But while those are powerful stories, they may be less surprising than the events that inspired Schofield's latest show: As a young woman in Charlotte, North Carolina, Schofield came out at three debutante balls as a Southern belle.

For those who don't know Dixie, the debutante ball is an annual Old South tradition in which young women put on elegant gowns, get paraded around mansions by tuxedoed young men and symbolically announce that they are ready to join society. For the debs, this ritual is called "coming out," and the joke is not lost on Schofield. His solo piece Debutante Balls—which he performs twice this week at the Cherry Lane Theater as part of the queercentric Fresh Fruit Festival—pokes fun at the similarities between his time in cotillion culture and his journey within the realm of gender politics.

Schofield has unwittingly broken rules in both worlds. Consider, for instance, the story of his debutante gown: As a middle-class kid who didn't arrive in the South until his teens, he didn't know that upper-crust debs usually attend balls in white dresses and kid gloves. So what was his coming out attire? A spaghetti-strapped number with a long black skirt and a leopard-print bodice. Blanche DuBois would have died.

"But it was the only dress I owned!" he says, chatting via instant message from a theater workshop in Serbia after the telephone stopped working in the middle of this interview. "I bought it at a nice place at the mall! How was I supposed to know?" he asks. "Like with gender, you only know you're doing it wrong as you do it wrong."

Schofield wears the frock during a crucial scene in Debutante Balls to explicitly symbolize his time as a woman. For most of his audiences, both queer and straight, he says the transformation scene is "a magical moment," but there are some who don't want him to acknowledge his feminine past.

"Some trans people feel that being trans is a birth defect that they've corrected through various medical interventions, and now they are living as the men and women they were truly meant to be," he explains. "They get angry at being considered anything else."

But for Schofield, it's crucial to keep identifying himself as trans and not just as a man. "I rail against the system that says we can't be all of ourselves," he says. "I think trans people especially have something special to say."

Ironically, since he's on hormone therapy and passes as a man, Schofield now regularly "comes out" as someone who wasn't born male. That wrinkle only strengthens his artistic mission.

"The major point of Debutante Balls is to highlight the ways we can all come out as things," he explains. "We can be sodefined. We can define ourselves out of our own truths, so we should trouble those notions and be all over them. It should not be possible for me to be a radical feminist debutante transman, but I am."

Schofield's perspective, which he has toured across the country since 2004, complements the rest of Fresh Fruit, whose fifth season runs through July 22. Several of the festival's other titles also hinge on gender and the various meanings of "coming out."

Lucile Scott's play Monroe Bound, running Saturday 14 through Tuesday 17, depicts an entire family facing its own identity issues, while British performer Joey Hateley uses his multimedia solo show A. Gender (July 21 and 22) to subvert both male and female archetypes.

Fresh Fruit artistic director Carol Polcovar is happy that the fest features multiple riffs on the same theme. "We tend to have pockets in our community that stay together and don't know about anyone else," she says. "I want people to 'get it,' to see that we're all coming at the same thing from unique places."

Debutante Balls is Thu 12 and Fri 13. The Fresh Fruit Festival runs at the Cherry Lane Theater and other locations through Jul 22. See It's Here, It's Queer, and also freshfruitfestival.com.

Fancy that | Theater, Gay & Lesbian | reviews, guides, things to do, film - Time Out New York:

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