Always (K)new: Recombining Identities and Queering Narratives through a Transcultural Theatre Project

The play Always (K)new, performed in Athens, Georgia, in December 2017, was conceived and developed by a collaborative group of scholars, students, and animation artists from the University of Georgia in the U.S., the Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei in Brazil, and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia. Initially inspired by Silvero Pereira’s solo performances of BR-Trans, this unique theatrical and pedagogical project was characterized by a fundamentally transcultural approach in which personal narratives of self-identified LGBTQ individuals were collected simultaneously in Athens, São João del-Rei, and Bogotá, then reconfigured through a collective process that involved translating, transcribing, recombining, and retelling these narratives through three distinct, but often intersecting, linguistic and cultural contexts. Through multiple theoretical lenses including performance studies, queer pedagogy, and Arfuch’s notion of permeable “biographical space,” this essay explores how the project’s recombinatorial approach contributed to a queering of the narrative that, in turn, tests the limits of representation and authorship (Who can represent who? Who can pass as what?). Involving students and faculty from the converging fields of theatre studies, literature, and the visual arts, and incorporating oral history, movement, song, and short animation, Always (K)new also presents an intriguing case of a devised play that defies easy categorization. Similarly, by allowing its development and performance to mirror the fluidity of gender and sexuality represented in the stories collected, the play echoes the often messy and unpredictable nature of not only sexual orientation and gender identity, but also the transcultural identities that can emerge in a frequently shifting global landscape.