A fraught journey finds a place of joy on stage for local poet Davi Gray
Northside poet Davi Gray performed her solo show, “This Body, This Fruit,” for a week in July at the Phoenix Theater. Her first book by the same name publishes early next year. Photo by David Pierini
By David Pierini, Editor
As she began to reveal her true self to family and friends, Davi Gray held some things back.
From an early age, the arrow on Gray’s inner compass pointed female even as the world knew her as male. The more detailed the explanation, the more vulnerable she felt.
That was early on in Gray’s journey, and today, she withholds little. The Northside poet recently demystified her transformation for packed shows in July at the Phoenix Theater in Minneapolis.
Her solo play, “This Body, This Fruit,” is an unvarnished memoir in poetry. Gray’s first book with the same title is set for release in February. A selection of poems from the 80-page book shapes the narrative arc for the performance.
Journey is a word trans people often use to describe their life. The very word suggests an extended stretch of time with bumpy roads, epiphanies, and the cruelty and kindness from people along the way.
Life for a trans person, as Gray will attest to in her work, is not instantly better once they realize there is a path to authenticity and then share their secret with others.
Gray describes the slow walk to physical and emotional transformation with candor, including acknowledging parts of her body that feel stuck in masculine appearance and the gaze that might draw. There is despair, but also hope, and, with lots of therapy, self-love.
“Sometimes, I am sadly surprised when I look down and see the misplaced flower of my sex.
“Whose is this? Oh... right. Every day of my life it has bloomed between my branches, cause of mistaken identity.
“But I was never one to make a fuss. No, I hiked my way through this unruly garden, step by step, quietly, without complaint, taking it like a man.”
To stand alone on a lit stage in front of an audience of 60 created new sensations of vulnerability, she said. She made a conscious choice to make wardrobe changes on stage in faint light.
Telling her story on stage knowng their are people behind the bright lights was a new feeling of vulnerability, Gray said. Photo by David Pierini
To a viewer, her performance was a raw retelling of coming out and becoming.
Gray wants her poetry and the show to encourage connection between human beings and, hopefully, resist the impulse to other someone.
“I hope… that I'm creating art which portrays trans people as people first of all, as complicated as every other human, and as incapable as every other human of being reduced to any one word or phrase or page or picture,” she said. “I hope that everyone who comes to my work leaves it with something new.”
Gray wished for some certainty on this. At her request, theater staff placed a pen and index card on each chair to invite feedback.
Caitlin Lowans, one of two associate directors, said Gray views the audience as a collective curator.
“The poems exist in a published form and now she’s making them into an evening,” Lowans said. “It’s been lovely to participate with her in the conversation of why this needs to be live and what is added to the work through performing it.
“It’s vulnerable. It’s also funny and sometimes unexpected. It sometimes feels like, oh my gosh, it’s too grown up even for me but it’s enjoyable to have those spaces where Davi is willing to go as a performer.”
Gray said she tries not to worry about how an audience will react, saying each member responds from their own context.
There are lines that bring the audience to the lowest depths of her journey, where it may be hard to breathe. Air is restored with sass, bawdy humor and seeing the well-worn steps she took to self-love and confidence.
At one point in the performance, a poem is broadcast over a speaker, as if a school principal was delivering an announcement or a voice reading a doctor’s note.
“To whom it may concern, please excuse Davi from their assigned gender. They are no longer able to fill the requirements…They have suffered anaphylactic reactions to the patriarchy and its never-ending demands.
“They have undergone a rigorous, if secretly pleasing, course of medication, meditation and surgical intervention, and are no longer able to come to the phone to answer the call, man up, calm down or pretend to be a lost boy. She will be unavailable for further self-immolation for approximately the length of the entire rest of her life.”
“I hope that I'm creating art which portrays trans people as people first of all, as complicated as every other human, and as incapable as every other human of being reduced to any one word or phrase or page or picture,” Gray said. Photo by David Pierini
Gray sees her performance as a milestone. It is her first full show and first experience as a “theater artist.” It is also a first where she shares an “immensely significant piece of my interior self.”
It was emotionally fraught to relive the story every night for a week, Gray said. Yet, audience responses reinforced the work she has done in accepting herself, an untended but welcome result.
The show ends in joy and “a sense of handing off the mission to the audience.”