Wikipedia

Draft:2boys.tv

Active since 2001, 2boys.tv (Stephen Lawson and Aaron Pollard) are a Canadian art duo based in Montreal, Quebec. Trained at the National Theatre School of Canada and at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and Concordia University, respectively, Lawson and Pollard are also known both as Gigi L’Amour and Pipi Douleur. This creative team and real-life couple work in video-supplemented performance, video itself, and installation and have presented in arts and queer spaces across the Western Hemisphere, Europe and New Zealand. The duo are known above all for extravagant and intense stage spectacles.[1]

Performance studies scholar Peter Dickinson notes their performance work, "supplements a camp aesthetic derived from drag with sophisticated video projections, original and found sound scores, the art of lipsynch and object-oriented and site-based installation (...)".[2] As artists, 2boys.tv are interested in the plasticity of video, often using it in a sculptural way instead of as a large screen.[3]

The name 2boys.tv was in fact a result of looking for a web domain name for the project. "(...) we came across this .tv which both references transvestism and transversalism." the duo told The New York Times in a 2011 interview, "But it's actually the domain of the small island in the South Pacific called Tuvalu. The country sold off its domain name to raise money because it's sinking due to global warming. And, of course, we're two boys."[3]

Selected performance and presentation history edit

CatoptROMANTICS (2019) edit

The artists set up a seance-like environment for a participatory, bilingual performance that explored who is missing at the table. Language, translation and understanding were important themes and practices at Encuentro, with events in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Canadian Art (magazine) reported that performance studies scholar, Diana Taylor called this piece, 'significant'. [4]

Tightrope (2011 - 2016)[2] edit

Tightrope includes original music by Alexis O’Hara and Radwan Ghazi Moumneh and kaleidoscopic video projections and shadow images by Montreal based lighting designer, Lucie Bazzo[2]. Taking its inspiration from the stories of the disappeared in South America, Tightrope offers a cast of young, local drag queens recruited from the cities to which the work has toured to channel an historical archive of grief and loss around HIV/AIDS. Together with their collaborators, Lawson and Pollard suit the spectating requirements of the local audiences by adapting the content of the piece, especially the language in which it is presented. Tightrope has been presented in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, shifting the title of the piece for each location thusly: Tightrope (EN) / Code raide (FR) / Cuerda Floja (SP), Corda Bamba (PT).[2] The show uses site-specificity as a key element. Since the piece debuted at Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, every iteration begins outside, leading the audience on a public promenade from a place of local significance in the neighbourhood towards the performance venue. The 2015 version for Phénomena Festival performance processed from parc Lahaie in Montréal’s Plateau Mont-Royal to the venue the Sala Rossa with members of Montréal drag troupe "House of Bogue" Judy Virago, CT Thorne, Jamie Ross, and 2Fik leading while O’Hara gave random spectators letters written by the show’s creators to read out recounting different scenarios of vigil for the missing[2].

(re)Generation (2012) edit

  • Phenomena Festival at La Sala Rossa (Montreal)[5]

Created to mark the 10th anniversary of 2boys.tv collaboration, (re)Generation pays tribute to the duo's body of cabaret work after Phenomena Festival asked them to produce a retrospective. Thinking with drag culture where knowledge is passed from queen to queen, instead of performing the retrospective themselves 2boys.tv cast favourite local drag artists to learn and embody the performances and, as Lawson says, "perhaps in a way own them afterwards." Lawson and Pollard were onsite, "like mad scientists to bring these Frankensteins to life." Re-performers included favourites of the anglo-Montreal underground: Jordan Arseneault, Antonio Bavaro, Joshua Pavan, An T Horné, Holly Gaulthier-Frankel. [5]

Phobophilia (2008, 2009, 2011) edit

Designed as a meditation on fear following the Abu Ghraib photography torture scandal, Phobophilia (meaning 'arousal from fear')[7] is a 1-hour, multimedia production performed for very small audiences, ie: 20 - 25 people at a time. Participants are blindfolded and led "in a human chain of trusting hands on shoulders"[7] to a second location into the near-darkness of a small room to observe what Lawson calls "a peculiar interrogation". Canadian performance studies scholar Peter Dickinson notes, "In this piece a pop-up book is transformed into a scale-model theatre, which Lawson’s projected shadow self navigates in a way that contrasts with our initial glimpse of his live body: perched precariously on a box, arms outstretched, head hooded by a paper bag (...)."[2] Projection and shadow are used in this very dark, surreal, highly visual and sonic piece referencing the poetic and cinematographic World War II era work of Jean Cocteau. The piece examines the line between fear, torture, their sexualization, and pop culture's voyeurism of both.[3] [6] "It is a project specifically designed to address fear, as an emotional but also as a political weapon" Pollard told Le Devoir.[8]

Zona Pellucida (2009) edit

  • Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto)[9][10]

The title, Zona Pellucida refers to the translucent protective material around a human egg.[10] This 45-minute performance that Toronto's NOW magazine called, "Queer film theory meets stylish techno-savvy (...)" works with multiple, small format projection and frequent audio samples of Vincenzo Bellini's opera La Sonnambula and Bing Crosby's Just One More Chance to create a dreamlike, filmic puzzle. An interrupted fairy tale allegory is re-played via projection on a succession smaller and smaller miniature proscenium stages in what scholar Dickinson suggests is a mise en abyme of each previous version.[2] Lawson plays a gothic drag queen who communicates mainly through classic lines of film dialogue, invoking many campy screen heroines from cult movies, such as Anne Baster from All About Eve, Gene Rowlands from Opening Night and Elizabeth Taylor from Suddenly, Last Summer. These lip synchings convey a sense of alienation and distance exploring themes of victimization, internal struggle with sexuality, and guilt.[9] Critics have compared the effect to the works of film maker David Lynch and Quebec Playwrights, Marie Brassard and Robert Lepage.[10]

Battle Hymn (2002, 2013)[1] edit

  • 2013 - Dixon Place (NYC)
  • 2002 - Club Plastic, Festival Mix Milano (Milan)

Selected film and video edit

  • Teddy Bears’ Picnic (2001)
  • 15 Questions (Something Blue) (2002)[1]

Installation edit

ARCADE series (2009, 2011) edit

An ongoing work for the duo, the 2011 variation collaborated with an artist-run centre and Shauna Janssen's curatorial collective Urban Occupations Urbaines, creating a site-based installation in Griffintown, one of Montreal's many historically working-class and rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods. Collaborators from the Montreal art scene were hired to produce short audio narratives with diorama's contained in shoeboxes which were animated by Lawson & Pollard when visitors selected a corresponding shoe from display on the walls of the venue.[2] Laura Levin writing for Canadian Theatre Review remarked, "Soon, I had toured a dozen shoeboxes on my own, experiencing memetic, fantastical, strange, and celebratory performances[11]."

Persephone (2007) edit

In this new-genre cabaret performance and installation moving beyond cross-dressing and gender-bending, the duo collapses linguistic distinctions, bridges the divide between stage, gallery and street, and operates as actor, director, and audience to produce an incessant relocation of boundaries. [12]

Publications edit

Lawson, Stephen. "Emcee Etiquettes: Experts Weigh In on How to Host the Perfect Cabaret Night." Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 177, 2019, p. 67-72.

Pollard, Aaron and Stephen Lawson. "Bonus Insert." Canadian Theatre Review, vol. 150, 2012, p. 1-17.

Pollard, Aaron and Stephen Lawson. "Tightrope, Translation and Transformation." Performance Research, vol. 21:5, 2016, p. 131-133.

Prizes and awards edit

2009 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement by a mid career artist working in the Interdisciplinary Arts, Canada Council for the Arts[5]

References edit

  1. ^ a b c Waugh, Thomas (2006). Romance of Transgression in Canada : Queering Sexualities, Nations, Cinemas. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 452.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Dickinson, Peter (2018). "'Still (Mighty) Real': HIV and AIDS, Queer Public Memories, and the Intergenerational Drag Hail". Viral Dramaturgies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. ISBN 978-3-319-70316-9.
  3. ^ a b c d e Piepenburg, Erik (2011-01-07). "Under the Radar: 5 Questions About 'Phobophilia'". ArtsBeat. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  4. ^ a b Wilson-Sanchez, Maya. "Hemispheric Thinking". Canadian Art. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  5. ^ a b c "Art duo 2boys.tv pass on drag torch to mark their 10th anniversary at Phenomena Festival". The Montreal Gazette. Oct 20, 2012. Retrieved February 28, 2024.
  6. ^ a b Soloski, Alexis (2011-01-12). "Under the Radar Returns to NYC". The Village Voice. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  7. ^ a b c "Performers open eyes and minds". The Herald. 2009-02-17. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  8. ^ a b Doyon, Frédérique (2008-02-09). "Danse et performance - Phobie créatrice et pièges de chasse". Le Devoir (in French). Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  9. ^ a b Sumi, Glenn (2009-01-14). "Diva act - NOW Magazine". NOW Toronto. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  10. ^ a b c "Audio, video and a drag queen. It works!". The Globe and Mail. 2009-01-23. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  11. ^ a b Levin, Laura; MacDonald, EmmaRose (June 2015). "Where Is Theatre Going?". Canadian Theatre Review. 163: s1–s14. doi:10.3138/ctr.163.001b. ISSN 0315-0836.
  12. ^ a b Fortin, Sylvie (2007). "La Biennale de Montréal, 2007". Art Papers Magazine. 31 (5): 52–53.

External links edit

Official website

Category:Art duos Category:Canadian performance artists Category:Canadian video artists Category:Canadian queer artists Category:Living people Category:20th-century Canadian LGBT people Category:21st-century Canadian LGBT people Category:Canadian drag performers

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