Realness Revolution created by Lewis Pickles Realness Revolution invites you into a world where status is skin-deep, where your pose is your position, and bad hair days are capital offences. An interactive, choose-your-own-adventure style performance guides you through the terrors of Glamazonia, a nation Rose XO rules with a finely-manicured iron fist. Can Louis La Rouge overthrow the Campy Cabinet? And can he do it whilst staying true to himself?
The light-hearted, absurd and gaudy aesthetic is the sugar coating for some very serious questions about power, conformity, presentation, and liberation. Rose XO promised a new, free world where everyone can be themself, but instead, created a new oppressive norm. Through using satirical extremes of queer culture, Realness Revolution seeks to demonstrate that damaging, hierarchical hegemonies will not end unless the ideological bases of these inequities are addressed. It also provokes conversation on how liberation movements can be co-opted by the forces of the establishment, woke-washing corporate violence and rebranding bigotry. Pride, once an anti-police riot led by black trans women, is now beset by Amazon-sponsored floats and TERF protesters.
Through watching Louis tackle a dystopia that seems bewilderingly different from our own, we hope the audience will find new ways of thinking about the oppressions they face daily. And though Glamazonia may not look like any existent nation, they may find it’s not as unfamiliar as they think. After all, social mores are only skin-deep
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Realness Revolution is a Boundless Happening created by Lewis Pickles. This Ideas post is written by Lex Urry, they are an artist and dramaturg who has acted as story consultant on the production.
Boundless Happenings are co-produced with Spy Studio and have been made possible thanks to the support of Bloomberg Corporate Philanthropies, the City Bridge Trust and the Wates Foundation.