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.
