Arts :: Arts And Culture
High Standards by Tynan Power
Bay Windows ContributorWednesday Oct 1, 2008 Standards of Care, a new work by transgender playwright Tobias K. Davis, comes to the stage in Northampton this week. This is Davis’s first play since his award-winning The Naked I: Monologues from Beyond the Binary, which earned the moniker "the trans Vagina Monologues." Claire Avitabile, who was the assistant director of The Naked I, will bring her 20% Theatre Company from Minneapolis to produce Standards of Care.
In this new work, Davis turns the typical love triangle on pointed end with the hilarious and moving story of Nancy, Jason and David. In some ways, Nancy is a typical mother who is not coping well as her 16-year-old, "Jessica," comes out as "Jason." However, Nancy isn’t just a typical mom; she’s also a gender therapist who treats transgender patients every day. What’s more, she’s falling head over heels for one of her patients, an FTM named David who is in therapy with her only to obtain the letter necessary for him to get "bottom" (or genital) surgery. Meanwhile, David is volunteering at an LGBT youth center where he meets Jason, but has no idea Nancy is Jason’s mother.
While the unwitting entanglement of the characters provides lots of laughs, the story goes deeper than the surface humor. The play reveals how complicated family dynamics can become for transgender people, even when they aren’t outright rejected. It also explores the transgender community’s relationship to healthcare, especially around the controversial Standards of Care authored by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (formerly HBIGDA). The Standards of Care provide a guide for healthcare providers to use when caring for transgender people, and, obviously, inspired the name of Davis’s play.
According to Davis, the relationship between the characters of Nancy and her FTM patient, David, is unusual. Most people obtain therapy because they need or want a therapeutic relationship and Davis says that’s not the case for David.
"David doesn’t need therapy. He doesn’t need a therapeutic relationship. He’s there because of this hoop he has to go through," Davis explains.
Davis says the play also shows how even liberal-minded parents who are accepting of LGBT people in general may have difficulty being accepting when their child comes out. He calls it the "Oh my God, not my kid" response.
"When you have a child, you have an idea of who you want the kid to be, who you think the kid will be, and then it doesn’t match up," Davis says. He adds that this reaction doesn’t only happen around gender or sexuality issues, but can happen even when parents think their child wants to be an art major, but the child decides to study engineering.
Davis thinks that parental reaction is one of the elements that makes the story more universal and helps the audience members find sympathy for the characters even if they’ve never had any experience with transgender issues before watching the play.
Claire Avitabile, who directed the show’s world-premier in Minneapolis in June, also feels the story is accessible to people regardless of their familiarity with transgender issues.
"It was incredible," Avitabile recalls of the Minneapolis production, "after every performance, the company was dedicated to offering a post-show discussion - which we are also going to do in Northampton - so people would stay afterwards and all the actors would come up with me on stage. We would just sit there and answer questions and ask the audience, ’What was your initial reaction?’ Every single time without fail, it was unbelievably positive. ... Thank-yous for doing the show and thank-yous for writing the show. People who had no prior experience with anything related to transgender came to the show and felt that it was very entertaining and very human."
It shows growth in Davis’s writing, as well.
"With this play, I really wanted to create characters that actually talk to each other," he says. His previous works were based on monologues.
Davis also explores a different view of transgender lives. While the monologues of The Naked I focused on self-identification and introspection around gender and sex, Standards of Care goes beyond identity to the stories of transgender lives in context.
Davis is thrilled that Avitabile and 20% Theatre - which was rated the #1 regional lesbian theater in the country by Curve Magazine in 2007 - are coming to Massachusetts to bring those stories to life on local stages.
"When you write a script, it’s your baby. Then you revise it and it’s your annoying toddler that you can’t stand. Then you take it to kindergarten and you have to say goodbye to your baby and hope they’re going to take care of it," he says.
20% Theatre did just that, according to Davis, when they presented Standards of Care in Minneapolis to packed houses for a six-show run.
"Claire [Avitabile] is brilliant in every way," he says. "She created parallels I didn’t even see and she cast the play incredibly well."
Four members of the original five-person cast will be reunited for the Northampton production, while one local actor takes up a small part.
The show will enjoy a three-night run in Western Massachusetts. On Oct. 2-3, Standards of Care will be at the Mendenhall Center at Smith College; on Oct. 4 it will be at the Student Union Ballroom of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
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