This Is Not a Play About Sex

Photo of TINAPAS cast

Tuesday’s Brown Bag, “This is Not a Play about Sex”, featured students who participated in this year’s performance of Christina Liu’s original play. The panel included Sofi Estay, Niall Henderson, Nick Grunden, Chantel Melendez, Carson Land, and Providence Ryan. The panel discussed their thoughts about the play and their experiences with acting out other identities other then their own. Some panelist, such as Sofi Estay, touched upon how they had a difficult time portraying their character during their performance. Sofi Estay was challenged while embodying her role as a heterosexual female who is a member of a sorority.  Though she herself identifies in this way, acting out this character made her realize that there were deeper differences she felt she had with this particular character. By trying to reconcile the differences between her character and herself, Sofi realized how affected the Colgate population is by issues surrounding sexuality. For Niall Henderson, he noted how the play allowed him to experience various intersections of race, class, and gender on Colgate’s campus, which he felt he had never had a chance to talk about until participating in TINAPAS. While the panelist all gave amazing and diverse accounts of their experience with TINAPAS, most of them seemed to agree that Liu’s play disrupted and critiqued Colgate students’ experiences with sex and sexuality on this campus.

            Another amazing part of this brown bag was the open discussion that audience members got to take apart in. The audience expressed their views on the play and spoke to aspects of the play that surprised them, that confused them, and that they thought were missing.  Some voiced how they wished that there were more trans identified identities in the play and a more diverse group of monologues. Emily Hawkins noted at the end of the brown bag how she plans on expanding on TINAPAS by interviewing more students in order to further Christina’s work.

-Sylvie Lauzon