On January 24th, the Ohio Legislature passed a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors AND enforcing gender-exclusive sports teams from elementary schools to colleges and universities. The next day, Cole Escola put on a corset, dress, and heels and took the stage at the Lucille Lortel Theater in Oh, Mary, a farce about the wife of America's sixteenth president.
Queer art is constantly characterized by resistance and resilience in the face of erasure. In the 1960s, artists like Charles Ludlam, John Vacarro, and Ronald Tavel resisted the criminalization of queerness by utilizing the camp and glitter of the downtown performance scene in traditional theater performances. This Ridiculous Theater often used cross-gendered casting to laugh in the face of laws outlawing cross-dressing. They showed the "man in a dress" image to be funny and harmless. More than half a century later, cross-dressing is no longer outlawed! Yay! But as is often the case with history, our problems don't go away; they evolve. Increased representation and seeming acceptance of the transgender community have resulted in an organized effort to erase us from existence legally. With Oh Mary, Cole Escola is communing with the spirits of their theatrical ancestors and redefining what it means to thrive in the faces of people who rebuke your existence.
Escola is not only reviving the Ridiculous. They're adding to the canon and revolutionizing the style. Unlike in the work of their predecessors, there is no "man in a dress" in Oh, Mary! Escola fills the piece to the brim with ridiculousness, but their gender expression as a nonbinary performer is not a part of it. They attack the role of Mary Todd with such virtuosity that the audience has no choice but to accept that they are the picture of masculine ambition and feminine desire. There's no time for a wink-wink as Cole adeptly floats around the stage in their gown. Escola's writing also resists the temptation to sprinkle in jokes about genitalia and undergarments that would call attention to the phenomenon of "man in dress." The love that Mary feels is real. Her dreams are real. There are just about a million jokes along the
Like its predecessors in the Ridiculous Theater, Oh, Mary does not pretend to be a call to political action. There are forms of protest meant to increase representation and prove the importance of life. Whether or not this was Escola's intention, Oh, Mary is a stellar argument to preserve and protect queer art and queer people. In a landscape where politicians attempt to mute and erase "transgenderism," Oh, Mary is loud. It refuses to be erased. It refuses to be quiet.
Oh, Mary, written by and starring Cole Escola, opens at the Lucille Theater on February 8th
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