A show featuring artists including Indigo Girl Amy Ray and transgender author T Cooper is set to begin in an abstract fort, constructed by transgender performance artist and Atlanta rising star Scott Turner Schofield.
Decoder rings will also be passed out, he says.
“When I was a kid, I liked to build forts and I thought it was a boy thing,” he says. “So I’m going to build a fort for the audience — we’ll all be in our living room together and able to share in a close, intimate way.”
The set up is part of “Riffing in the Round,” where Ray, Schofield and Cooper join the Athens Boys Choir and Three5Human to take turns performing some of their new works not yet seen in Atlanta.
The event takes place at Eyedrum Gallery on April 24. Each artist will perform approximately three 10-minute sets, and the event ends with a question-and-answer session.
What Schofield hopes for most is that people attending gain an appreciation for diverse forms of art: performance art, music, readings and spoken word.
“Audiences in Atlanta tend to be segregated to the art we patronize,” he says. “I’m hoping the audience will see value in all these art forms and how they are connected and then go out and see other kinds of art this fine city has to offer.”
“RIFFING IN THE ROUND” IS A reunion for Ray, Cooper and Schofield, who performed together in 2003 at Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse in Midtown. At the time, Schofield was performing as KT Kilborn, Cooper had just put out his first book, “Some of the Parts,” and Ray had released her first solo album, “Stag” in 2001.
Ray, who loved “Some of the Parts,” told Schofield she wanted to work with Cooper, so they put together that show four years ago. Over the years, they remained friends, watching each other's careers flourish.
Finally, it was time for a reunion.
“We thought it would be fun to do a redux of that night and add more people,” Cooper explains. Cooper's 2006 novel, “Lipshitz 6, or Two Angry Blondes,” just released in paperback.
And for Ray, who wanted to perform at Eyedrum because she loves the space and the diversity it attracts, the time was right to get back together.
“I believe in them [Cooper and Schofield]," Ray says. "What they have to say is important and creative to issues around gender and to humanity, really.
“For me, it’s a selfish endeavor to have this special experience," she adds. "It’s really going to be more fun than anything. It’s going to be refreshing to be around a lot of different art forms.”
SCHOFIELD’S NEW PERFORMANCE PIECE, “Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps,” a show still in the making, allows the audience to select the numbered story they want to hear, he explains.
“It’s a choose-your-own-adventure piece and a way for me to tell fresh, new stories,” Schofield says. “No two stories are alike.”
The title states 127 steps to becoming a man, but Schofield acknowledges he’s only finished about 63 so far. “Becoming a Man in 127 EASY Steps” was commissioned by the National Performance Network, making Schofield the first openly transgender artist to be selected by the commission.
The April 24 performance is a sneak peek of the show slated to premiere in its entirety in Atlanta in January 2008.
Scott Turner Schofield(Photo by Nadja Goodvin)
Gender and identity are an obvious part of Schofield’s work, but he says his and the other performers’ stories are universal in that they touch on family, isolation, childhood and politics.
“How much is it about gender, or that it’s taken through this one lens of a transgender artist?” he asks.
COOPER, A LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD final-ist in the transgender category for “Some of the Parts,” set out on a whirlwind, worldwide book tour upon the release of his best seller “Lipshitz 6, or Two Angry Blondes.” During “Riffing in the Round,” Cooper reads from “Lipshitz 6,” a story that spans 100 years of a family’s history culminating with the last, modern-day member who is transgender.
The novel deals with immigration, Judaism, anti-Semitism and numerous other cross identities, Cooper explains.
“The themes fit in with all these works that are about all these spaces in between,” he explains.
Ray says she’ll perform songs from her solo albums “Stag” and “Prom,” both released on her own Decatur-based Daemon Records independent label, as well as a few songs she’s currently working on for another solo album.
“People should take home whatever they want from it,” Ray says of the event. “That’s part of the freedom of expression. It’s just art for me.”
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