Out performance artist Peterson Toscano will use his craft to fuel discussions on sexuality, gender and religion in the coming weeks, as he is featured in Haverford College’s artist-in-residence program.
Toscano, an activist who uses comedy, Biblical scholarship and storytelling to address social-justice issues, has traveled internationally performing plays and hosting lectures and workshops that explore LGBT issues, faith, sexism, racism, violence and gender.
Toscano said he will perform shows he wrote throughout his career as part of his residency.
“It’s a wide range of work including my newest piece, ‘Jesus Had Two Daddies,’” Toscano said. “I’m also going to premiere some new material about climate change, raising the question, ‘Is there a queer response to the climate-change crisis?’”
Toscano’s residency will also include his earlier pieces, like “Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House,” which chronicles the years he spent attempting to change and suppress his same-sex orientation and gender difference until he finally came out gay in 1999, as well as “Transfigurations — Transgender Bible Stories,” where Toscano explores stories of transgender and gender-variant people from the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.
Toscano said his interpretations of the scriptures cast a more positive light on the stories contained in them.
“It does two major things,” he said. “It presents positive stories about people who are not typical — queer folks. That is important to have positive stories about these folks because so often people use the Bible to beat the shit out of us. So it’s good to see there are some positive stories. The other thing it does is it is a way to be subversive with the text, not only around LGBT issues but also how to read the text through taking on different lenses. It helps people who have been oppressed by the Bible or who are oppressors to begin to see it in a new framework and break down some of that oppression.”
One might think religious people wouldn’t be very open-minded to Toscao’s takes on biblical stories, but he said a surprising number of people have embraced his interpretations.
“I have been shocked at how enthusiastic Bible scholars have been,” he said. “I was terrified when I first began to show it to reputable Bible scholars. People just loved it. They said I showed them things that they hadn’t seen before in the text and that my conclusions were all totally sound and supported with the scholarship that exists out there. They were thrilled about it, which made me very thrilled.”
Toscano added that while his shows focus on Hebrew and Christian scriptures, people from a wide variety of religions have turned up at his performances.
“Pagan, nontheists and all kinds of folk have been engaged in it,” he said. “I’ve been able to perform it in lots of places throughout North America, Europe and parts of Africa. It translates pretty well into other cultures because they are very human stories. It’s also a very physical play, where I act out all the characters and I morph and shift my own body in ways to help people understand the story better. Even conservative Christians respond well to the play.”
Toscano is featured in Haverford College’s artist-in-residence program March 18-April 7. He will meet with a range of on-campus groups throughout the month, as well as take part in a number of public events. For more information and the full schedule, visit www.petersontoscano.com or www.haverford.edu/quakeraffairs/friend_in_residence.