Draft:2boys.tv

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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] As artists, 2boys.tv are interested in the plasticity of video, often using it in a sculptural way instead of as a large screen.[2]

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."[2]

Selected performances 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'. [3]

Tightrope (2011 - 2016)[4][edit]

Taking its inspiration from the stories of the disappeared in South America, Tightrope uses a posse 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 AIDS. The show uses site-specificity as a key element. 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).[4]

(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 (the title, means 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". 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.[2] [6] "It is a project specifically designed to address fear, as an emotional but also as a political weapon" Pollard told Le Devoir.[8] One reviewer from The Glasgow Herald commented, "When our blindfolded trudging stops, we're released into the near-darkness of a small room where a miniature pop-up book (simple idea, sophisticated technology) acts like an exquisitely crafted peep-show into the quest for the poetic in a time shadowed by fear."[7]

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. Lawson's 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]

Installations[edit]

An ongoing work for the duo, this iteration collaborated with an artist-run centre and curatorial collective, creating a site-based installation in Griffintown, one of Montreal's many historically working-class and rapidly gentrifying neighbourhoods.[4]

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. [11]

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 Piepenburg, Erik (2011-01-07). "Under the Radar: 5 Questions About 'Phobophilia'". ArtsBeat. Retrieved 2024-02-29.
  3. ^ a b Wilson-Sanchez, Maya. "Hemispheric Thinking". Canadian Art. Retrieved 2024-03-24.
  4. ^ a b c d e 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.
  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 d "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 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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