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by Tara Ali Din
The Lesborrist Tapes is an attempt, no matter how strange, surreal or confrontational, to attempt to bridge the gap between religion and sexuality. These concepts are meant with the lower-case initial letters, meant as a part of everyday life, not as grand, over-arching, high-falutin’ concepts. Religion is seen through the aspect of devotions that are done as everyday chores. Sexuality is meant as the somewhat mundane (but no less enjoyable or thrilling) jolts of lust and torrid encounters that any person, at any given moment, could be engaged in. The marriage between these two acts, taken to their most grotesque and surreal extremes is the crux of what is dealt with by this incendiary new theatrical drama, written by Joshua Ferguson and myself.
Within the play, the audience witness the eponymous Lesborrist, the Muslim lesbian terrorist, confess the innermost workings and motivations within her mind and the twisted (but strangely logical) conclusions to which she arrives. In between her soliloquies, the aftermath of her actions is discussed by an anonymous man and woman, who bear witness to her acts of sexual terrorism shot through with crude, schoolboy black humour. The audience sees the vastly different ways in which these inverted, caricatured archetypes are affected by the Lesborrist’s actions.
The Lesborrist Tapes attempts – through an examination of a new, carnal type of violence – to challenge the perceptions of religion, the absurdity of sexual humour, and to hopefully inspire thought (and some laughs) while doing it. It is a call to arms, a call to prayer, and a drunken booty-call at three o’clock in the morning. The world we live in now is dominated by religiosity that has no sense of humour, with religious types who steadfastly refuse to laugh at themselves. The Lesborrist Tapes is an attempt to take the first, faltering steps towards changing that.
So come and see the play on the 23 February 2013.
An excerpt of the play is also available in the anthology Spoke: New Queer Voices.
