Manifesto transpofágico

Punishment, mass incarceration, censorship, pathology, AIDS, the diaspora and violence and murder of trans/travesti bodies: ‘I didn't discover myself as a travesti, they screamed at me’. Carvalho speaks softly, slowly and into the microphone to ‘soothe the cisgender eyes and ears’ when they see or hear the word travesti, repeated and illuminated several times and asks, ‘Does anyone want to touch me?’ 

Manifesto transpofágico invites the public to look at her travesti body, tirelessly, and introduces us to its historicity as well as its construction. ‘My body came before me, without my asking’ but ‘in a way, I got pregnant with myself. I gave birth to me.’  
It also questions how people see the travesti body. ‘That's why I don't need a face,’ she explains. ‘We know the cut-out of travestis, from the top of the bus, on foot, by bicycle, on the motorcycle or in the car - no one comes close or talks, because we are dangerous – and it is from this fraction of a second that our images are formed’. Plus, which of these images do each of us still carry?  

The show is divided into two moments. The first moment is a presentation of the travesti body, its historicities, transcestrality and the constructions surrounding trans/travesti bodies. In the second moment, Carvalho is in the audience and proposes a conversation with the public, exposing personal questions and themes such as cisgenderism, passing, terminologies, and others. These are provoked by the actress who always remembers: ‘Does anyone have any questions of any kind?’ 

• Renata Carvalho has been working in theatre since 1996 and made her debut as an actress in 2012 in the solo Inside me lives another where she took her body as an object of research, something which has permeated all her artistic production since. She is also a human rights and LGBTQ+ activist, focussing on the issues of trans people and travestis.