Tori Reynolds

The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance

Egg Discourse is a movement meditation on the machinations of transness. The "egg," an internet-born term for trans people who do not yet realize they are trans, becomes a framework for investigating, questioning and disrupting the "born in the wrong body" narrative and other identity-based narratives of transition. Instead, the performance turns its gaze towards transition by choice, transition by contagion, transition as inescapable process and transition as life itself. 

A large Rube Goldberg machine, built by Austin-based set designer Tori Reynolds, co-exists onstage with the performer. Rube Goldberg machines, by definition, perform a very simple task through a very complicated mechanism. A series of small events, a chain reaction, which leads to a desired result. Here, the machine extends into the body of the performer, whose movements become an indispensable part of the machine's transformative process. 