Temple is a force of nature and looks stunning in Bethany J Fellow’s costume designs two clever, contrasting jumpsuits. Rachel Lewindon’s soundscape provides a haunting, lilting accompaniment with use of breathe work and the occasional pop banger to lift the mood. Katie Sfetkidis’ lighting uses a fabulous array of colours and tones to evoke the epic emotions inspired by the text. Kitan Petkovski’s production attractively and brilliantly utilises the Theatreworks space to create a fun, anarchic and unpredictable space for the audience to integrate themselves and for Temple to let loose. The nuances and specific incidents cited within the script all felt painfully familiar. The semantics aren’t especially relevant whether Temple and Alabanza were both literally hit with a burger is beside the point they share the experience of the harm that is inflicted on trans bodies as a matter of course, that’s sadly quite universal. The act of making the burger, trying to understand the societal constructs that led to it being thrown with the intention of causing humiliation and harm. The violence and dark absurdity of the act is deconstructed as part cooking show, part confessional, part audience interaction. Alabanza is having a very good week, their play Sounds of the Underground opened at the Royal Court in London as well.

Burgerz was originally written and performed by Alabanza in the UK in 2019 and has been reappropriated for Kikki Temple this side of the pond. The inciting incident being a burger hurled at them accompanied by a transphobic slur and the inaction of those that witnessed it. But its most glaring inhibition comes when a performance is so raw, so personal, so essential that to rate it like you would the quality of mince, feels transgressive, and counter intuitive to the power of the experience.īurgerz by Travis Alabanza and currently being embodied by Kikki Temple at Theatreworks is a searing exploration at the ways in which BIPOC trans and gender non-conforming people exist in public spaces. I often find the rating system limiting yes it’s a readily accessible and shorthand way of indicating whether a performance is worth seeing or not based on the individual tastes and points of reference of the reviewer.

Burgerz by travis alabanza