Cast of 'And the Rest of Me Floats'. Photography by Helen Murray
And The Rest Of Me Floats is a performance all about the messy business of gender, made by Outbox Theatre and conceived and directed by Ben Buratta.
Devised by performers from across the trans, non-binary, and queer communities, the show weaves together autobiographical performance, movement, pop songs, stand-up, and dress-up in an anarchic celebration of gender expression and identity. This show was performed at The Rose Lipman Building in London in September 2017 and Birmingham Repertory Theatre in November 2017. It was then programmed by Bush Theatre as part of their 2019 season. The text is published by Oberon Books.
The research imperative for this project was to investigate the dramaturgy of making a performance based around the biographies of 7 gender-diverse performers. And The Rest Of Me Floats specifically focusses on the transition in performance asking:
Playing with form and offering alternative and autonomous ways for performers to express their biographies, gender expressions and identities meant that new ways of creating work were engaged with. In a normative process, the transition in theatre acts as the connective tissue between scenes, it is clearly defined and takes us from one section of a play to the next. Many of the performers in the room were in gender transition and this allowed Buratta to think and consider the theatrical transition in a different way, and ask of it- what happens when the transition becomes central to the rehearsal process? Can the scenes in a play interrupt the transition?
To date, over 3,500 people have seen the show and 91,000 people have viewed the trailer online. The performance was filmed by the V&A museum and will form part of their National Video Archive of Performance. Alongside the performances, Outbox partnered with Gendered Intelligence (UK’s largest arts organisation working with trans youth) to deliver 9 workshops for trans and non-binary actors aged 16-25. These workshops were based around the themes of the show and were delivered in conjunction with leading theatres The Royal Court, Birmingham Rep, Leeds Playhouse, Bush Theatre and Bristol Old Vic in order to introduce more trans people into actor training and the theatre industry.
Key Partners: Bush Theatre, Birmingham Repertory Theatre, Rose Lipman Building, Gendered Intelligence
Key Funders: And The Rest Of Me Floats was supported by significant funding from National Lottery Community Fund, Arts Council England, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Special Research Fund) and Prime Theatre
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