Staging Faggotry

Faggotry, what and how a faggot does, precedes the faggot himself. Faggotry cries out inside of him, begging for release. “Let me out!” she shrieks, and inevitably he, the Faggot, must. If the Faggot’s worth his salt, they’ll put on a show together.

Prince Faggot is a show of Faggotry blazed to her hungriest, most dazzling ends. It shows us, in flesh, all of what Faggotry can be: plump scrota slapping in the throes of doggy-style, a grown man lisping under a bob wig, closed fists at the family table, Shibari-shackled wrists, a femme queen voguing soft and cunt.

A photograph of Prince GEORGE of Cambridge, at the age of four, is projected.

PERFORMER 1
Prince George of Cambridge in 2017, gazing with limpid amazement at an ascending helicopter.

At top of show, Tannahill shows us the seed from which Prince Faggot sprung: a viral snap of a powerful, world-famous preschooler whose boyishness seems, in this moment, to have given way to girlish “amazement:” knees buckled, wrists limpened, back arched. A boy’s amazement is his disarmament, some fleeting submission to what he feels. But what of a boy’s power? What happens when a particularly powerful boy, someday a powerful man, buckles his knees, limps his wrists, and arches his back? Is he collapsing? Abdicating? 

For a Prince, a single gesture can plunge an empire into anarchy, and a faggy gesture spells chaos. Faggotry coos, chants, and shrieks from within; she careens down a marble staircase in a nightgown underneath a chandelier. She seizes her host to ravish a nation, sever a family, or break a law.

It’s not that Faggotry’s out to catch a case (she doesn’t even watch the news or pay her taxes!), it’s that she burns within and for the faggot, whose body is for guiltless joy and whose heart is for boundless love–unless, of course, he asks to be bound! In that case, set the scene. And so does Tannahill: from high and low, with God and the devil, of paupers and princes.

Prince Faggot is a deliberate provocation. It’s blue-chip clickbait, X-rated fanfic, and “punke” with an e–how Shakespeare spelled it to describe whores. Prince Faggot knows it’s a massive fucking stunt because Jordan Tannahill is a massive fucking faggot–one of the best we’ve got, if you ask me. When Faggotry calls, Tannahill answers. He hoists her up, paints her fierce, tells her what to say, and walks her–leashed–onstage to lend us new ways of seeing, feeling, and hearing. Listen up: she’s cooing, chanting, shrieking. Can or will you hear her? What does she want? Would it feel good? Does it scare you? Why? Why not?