Monday, October 7, 2013

TINAPAS

        I hope you were all one of the over 600 people that went out this weekend to see a performance of “This is Not a Play About Sex” by Cristina Liu ’13.  This was my second time seeing the show, and just like last year, I came away with amazement on so many different levels.   The show is not only provocative and funny at points, but the most meaningful part is that it was taken from real life experiences of Colgate students.  With the help of a University Studies grant last year, Liu was able to interview students on campus and make her transcriptions into monologues for a senior project.  She interviewed 28 students and had over 300 pages of transcriptions, which she used to create the monologues for her show. 
      I was so excited to learn that the play was being put on again this semester, as I truly believe that every Colgate student should see it since it hits so close to home.  Additionally, it was great that the play was shown earlier in the year, as many first-years and new sophomore members to Greek life were able to see it and take something away from the performance. The show has helped to further the positive sexuality movement at Colgate that first originated with the Campus Climate Survey in 2009, and I trust that people will continue to talk about this play and work to keep its legacy going.
      Of course all of the acts were fantastic and significant in so many different ways, but I would like to highlight two that struck me the most.  “Afterhours” at first starts off comically as cast members set themselves up to look like they are sitting on a bus and one person walks by with a sign reading “The Cruiser” which rightfully garners giggles from the audience.  Various characters make their way onto the bus, as the audience sees some drunk students stumbling around or falling asleep on the seats and others flirting it up with those around them.  A couple walks onto the bus and sits together discontentedly.  The woman is telling what appears to be her hookup buddy or potentially boyfriend that she wants to go back to her room alone and go to sleep.   Interspersed with their argument are the comicalities of the other Cruiser riders eating Slices and drunkenly chitchatting with each other, but then the scene takes a more serious turn as the guy says, “Stop being such a cunt!” He moves to the back to sit away from her and yells for the whole bus to hear how she is such a cunt. He just keeps repeating what in my opinion, is the most offensive word in the English language.  The scene ends at this point (without anybody on the bus even batting an eye at such an atrocious word!), but it is the audience’s reaction that really shows whether or not they have understood the deeper message. Last year I remember people laughing and not getting that this part was not supposed to be funny but rather it was supposed to be taken seriously.  This year, I was upset to still hear snickers in the audience.  I would have hoped for people to have understood it better this year, but I guess I was proven wrong. 
      “Los Conquistadores” is the second act that I want to highlight.  This monologue involves the stereotypical frat boy character who at first talks about the bond between him and his brothers. He garners some laughs when he talks about the typical Colgate girl as being “blonde, and preppy, and wearing rain boots whenever there’s a fucking cloud in the sky.” As he continues, he reveals that coming to Colgate shocked him as he had never had so much power and so much social capital until joining a frat.   About halfway through, he looks at presumably Cristina who was the interviewer and asks almost rhetorically, “This is anonymous right?!”  Once he receives that affirmation, he opens up even more so about how absolutely screwed up the whole social scene.  He reveals that sometimes all he wants is a real relationship with a girl, one that isn’t so utterly backwards.  In the end, he hopes that this is not what “real life” will be like once he leaves Colgate.
      Overall, the play deals with so many social intricacies on campus that are not typically talked about in group settings.  One of the themes of the show is the fact that so many students at Colgate feel that they lack not only deep sexual relationships, but lack meaningful interpersonal relationships as well.  The hope of the play is that students will learn to better communicate with each other and learn to value each other on an individual level, and not just as what they appear to be on the outside.  Our four years at Colgate are surely “real life” as I know I haven’t been living in a dream!  Not only do we need to start treating our time here in that way, but we need to be sure to treat others as “real life people” as well.
-Lindsey Skerker ‘14

P.S. I would like to resurrect this post by Liu in response to comments she received last year from fratstar69…if you haven’t seen this yet, take a look.  Let’s hope the message and the legacy of TINAPAS eventually sinks in and resonates with all of the people on campus.

10 comments:

  1. TINAPAS is what led me to women's studies as a possible pathway and I definitely felt as though it was something that I could relate to last year when I saw the filmed version of it. Even in the second semester of my freshman year I could already understand this play in relation to Colgate. Christina did a wonderful job of capturing Colgate, and criticizing the social scene in a thoughtful way so that students might see it differently. I was extremely pleased to hear that new fraternity members were required to attend. While I was displeased that the sorority girls didn't have to attend, I was astounded by the attendance to the Saturday performance and I hope that it really is a good lead into more positive sexuality and a better search for deeper connections between students on campus. I also found the format of the performance engaging and I think that the form of the play helps to bring these issues to life for students. Sitting in the balcony I was amused that all the guys there were actively watching the performance with what seemed to me to be real interest. Also that when need be, the whole balcony leaned forward to try to catch a glimpse of the actors onstage.

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  2. I didn't get the pleasure of seeing TINAPAS last year, but when the opportunity came around this year, I was quick to jump on it. As Lindsey Skerker comments, this play highlights the incredible intricacies on this campus. The way in which the play calls to attention the downsides of our social culture not only spreads awareness to the problems and potentially, lesser heard perspectives, but also, shares with the audience that they are not alone in how they feel. In one way or another, we all interact with Colgate's social scene. It is easy to feel isolated and validated in how we feel and what we see. A play like TINAPAS is completely necessary for this campus. I truly hope the conversation does not end the moment the actors took their bows.

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  3. As a freshman, I was very excited to see this play because I had heard so much about how it critiques the social life at Colgate, which is something that disappoints me about Colgate. The lack of racial, sexual and social diversity at Colgate is appalling. I feel like the culture here is quite uni-dimensional so I was definitely excited when a lot of people came to see the play. The parts that I connected with were the rules that a girl made to help herself at Colgate, with one of them being something along the lines of not expecting anything back. This idea of repeatedly engaging in sex with somebody and feeling as though they did you a huge favor by coming to eat with you is sad. I guess what saddens me is how that girl simply accepted this behavior is something she cannot change as this is how Colgate is. I honestly believe that is we did not continue to accept such low standards then it would definitely change the way we interact with each other. I really enjoyed the part where the girls talked about masturbation as when my friends and I came back home, we discussed it in great detail and we tried to remove the negative connotations we associate with female masturbation and replace them with more positive ones. We decided to reclaim our bodies as we all do it and it is normal. The play gave us the confidence to discuss female masturbation and I am definitely thankful for that.

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  4. I agree with Lindsay's overall summation of the play that she provides at the end of her post. Colgate's social scene is extraordinarily intricate, but I feel that sometimes we can think of it as one, predominantly negative social process that happens on campus. As Lindsay says, the play showed that Colgate students don't feel satisfied in the depth of their sexual relations with others, or their experiences when they go out..... And though that isn't necessarily a good thing in general, to me that says something about our hope for each other and our desires. I walked away from TINAPAS feeling reassured in our campus, because to me the take-home message was that in the end, we all just want connection. Organic, genuine connection. That humanizes a lot of what the Colgate social scene is. This might sound like a simplification, but even to this day, weeks after I've seen the play, I still feel oddly comforted by the show's message, and I'm thankful for the work Christina did because now it's all out in the open and can be processed by everybody. All things that can lead to more and more genuine connection.

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  5. I really enjoyed TINAPAS, and was surprised with how accurate the play depicted the social life at Colgate. One of my favorite scenes was pleasure party. In this scene, I remember the actor saying, ”it has to get better after Colgate.” This line really resonated with me, and left me wondering why we have to wait until after Colgate for our social lives to be better. I think this should be a main message sent to Colgate students; we should do everything in our power to make life at Colgate better. I think this play in itself is an attempt at making Colgate a better place. It encourages students to talk about these issues we have on campus, and find solutions that better our life here at Colgate. I agree with Jennifer in that I hope the conversation that TINAPA started is ongoing, and that students continue to talk about these issues- because these issues are important.

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  6. As a member of the TINAPAS cast, I want to say how grateful I am to have had the opportunity to be a part of such a fabulous experience. I felt that the cast represented Colgate's social climate well - it was comprised of women, men, freshmen, seniors, across the spectrum of race, religion, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. It was interesting to speak 2 monologues that I did not identify with, as people approached me after the show and wondered if those voices were my own. Giving voices to everyone on this campus is important, and as a cast we discussed the possible voices that may be lacking from the show. Going forward, we hope to create new monologues that adequately represent as many Colgate students as possible, so that no one is left out of the dialogue.

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  7. TINPAS was important for me because it brought forward ideas about sexuality on Colgate's campus that are familiar to me, and others that I have never thought about before. I really really liked "Los Conquistadores," because it shows a point of vulnerability in the frat culture that could only be found in an anonymous interview. In public, I feel that fraternity brothers don't feel that they can mention the pressures they face to show loyalty to their brothers and their organization by going for stereotypically pretty girls, despite what might be his individual preference. That's what really impresses me about Liu's project. She was able to seek out so many different sexualities and how they play with social pressures, and I feel that the promised anonymity has a lot to do with that. People want to be able to express themselves, but they don't necessarily want to be associated with their personal insights (which might conflict with the norm). It really gets to the core of a lot of issues at Colgate, such as rape culture and isolation, and creates conversation that can be used to remedy these things.

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  8. I think this was a great account of TINPAS and I would like to add a couple things I noticed from the performance. The skit about the incident on the cruiser hit home for me because I have a friend who went through a similar situation. She heard some guys saying some degrading things about women and decided to say something back to them. Their response was to verbally attack her instead, and the most disturbing part was no one did anything to stand up for her. How do we expect any change on this campus to happen if we do not support each other? There is a culture of silencing on this campus that has to end before any real change can happen. I think "Los Conquistadores" was very honest and I appreciated its vulnerability. I think a lot of girls wonder how frat guys think, and this was a good insight into their perceptions. Sometimes people feel lonely if they do not agree with the social structure, but this performance proves you are not alone. I hope this play is continued for years to come, and I hope more stories are added. Specifically, I hope there is at least one skit about being a woman of color on this campus and how that interacts with the hookup culture and the greater social life on campus.

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  9. I appreciate all of the comments everyone, thanks so much for reading! I wanted to post this link to a blog post by the woman who was the "cunt" in the above scene http://whiteminorities.tumblr.com/post/64818401147/on-being-called-a-cunt

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  10. Well the skit "Afterhours" was an event I had actually heard of previous to the play. I am a psych student. In my research methods class, we had our focus be on bystander effect, the interested stemming from this incident. The class had to ride the cruiser for a 2 hour span on a few Friday and Saturday nights. The time ranged from 9pm-3am. We had many interesting findings of which we presented to the administration to see if the cruiser situation could get better. We found there were many incidents occurred on the cruiser when people were drunk (later in the evening). The victims tended to be a female. Most incidences tended to not have intervention because the bus was more crowded and the alcohol doesn't help people realize the severity of the situation. If you'd like to find more about the study Professor Conti would have more details.

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