By Eva Phillips
What we have stored as memory is vital. Everything present, everything “now” is chaos.
This is statement that is at once a quixotically simple, irrefutable truth, and undeniably self-negating. By one token, of course all that we have stored and archived—our stories, memories of family members, photos, facts—is all we are. It is crystallized, it is permanent, it is sacred—our daily lives are fraught with confusion, change, and chaos. But by the other token, if our “now” is defined by chaos and our minds and memories are under assault all the time, how can we properly retrieve, let alone trust, the things that we have archived?
You Can Call Me Al, the new creative project from Ali Hoefnagel, showing at New Hazlett (as a part of the Community Supported Art initiative) —that can perhaps best be described as multiformat, interpretative longform-storytelling—is not only an exploration of the artist’s life, memories, vulnerabilities, and fears. It is also a story that, through the process of telling, examining and sharing, embraces the dichotomy inherent to preserving and upholding memory.
At a prima facie level, Hoefnagel is presenting a story of their coming out as trans, and the exhausting process of having to incessantly explain and implore the importance of their pronouns (they/their) to their somewhat flummoxed parents. The story opens with a subtle yet vivid recreation of a conversation (that, from Hoefnagel’s brilliantly understated performance, we can tell is a sort of conversation that happens frequently) in which their mother is perplexed at the introduction of pronouns that seemingly defy the rules of English and grammar taught in elementary school, and it will echo puzzlements throughout about language and self—the fear that when Hoefnagel receives an award and identifies as they “it sounds like you didn’t [earn it] on your own;” the bafflement of what parents should call Hoefnagel if they can’t use the word daughter (“child” and “kid,” of course). These kinds of conversations, these processes of coming-out as trans, as nonbinary, as queer, that are so achingly familiar (and clearly resonated with the majority of the audience), comprise only one dimension of You Can Call Me Al. These coming-out processes become all the more crucial, as Hoefnagel notes up-front, because mid-way through the creation of You Can Call Me Al, Hoefnagel’s partner gave birth to a child. And how Hoefnagel articulated coming-out, how they viewed parenthood, and how their conception of their own mother completely erupted.
You Can Call Me Al underwent many furious rewrites, even up to the last few minutes before stepping on stage, and the unending process of revision, edits and re-articulations interestingly mirror the reiterated processes of coming out in Hoefnagel’s story. Hoefnagel’s story thus is actually a navigation through the catacombs of their memories, a dire endeavor that at must confront fear, disease, willful ignorance, self-refusal and the complexities of love.
The fortification of identity that is so tantamount to selfhood for queer and trans* folx is fascinatingly and delicately intertwined with elements of loss and grief that Hoefnagel witnesses throughout their life. The identity that Hoefnagel has known intimately and unequivocally their whole life—in one of the more outstanding moments of tragicomedy, Hoefnagel discusses being in the closet about being severely depressed and categorically queer from second grade on—is so often challenged and disputed and dismantled. Hoefnagel deftly parallels this to denial of identities and the loss of self experienced through age, trauma etc. of individuals in their life. Hoefnagel’s vignettes about the difficult periods in self-acceptance, self-articulation, and dealing with the external world’s hostilities interestingly precipitate and connect to struggles of those around them that both solidify Hoefnagel’s unique experiences and selfhood, and also serve to indelibly connect them to certain people in surprising ways.
This masterful and cleverly underplayed coalescing of arcs is one of the plethora of astonishing elements of You Can Call Me Al. Hoefnagel wonderfully marries precision and practice with off-the-cuff charm and visceral emotion (as they noted, they literally found themselves cutting and editing 10 minutes before walking on stage). The result is that the story is just as structured as it is blithely and invitingly organic. At no point do we feel the story is about to meander off course, or that it may be derailed, but we also feel Hoefnagel’s delightful exuberance and skillful delight at each turn the story takes. It is a rare and divine experience. It also makes the countless humorous moments—like Hoefnagel’s exasperation over their mother treating The L Word like the Friends for queers when they came out to understand them (you’re dating a lot…you’re such a Shane)—and the burning moments (Hoefnagel describing their alcohol abuse in the midst of their coming out as trans)—all the more iridescent and profound. We are experiencing them as well (and many of us in the audience were experiencing these things for a second or third time). You Can Call Me Al’s incredible musical accompaniment Gray delivers haunting electric violin and songs whose lyrics function as a sort of emotional compass. Having Gray situated above Hoefnagel allows for a more conscience-esque aura, as well (especially for folks like me who divide their brain into compartments, and situate the logic/conscience in the back). The show also benefits tremendously from the actual space in New Hazlett, which generates the feeling of being excavated and exhumed—an appropriate vibe for such a storytelling experience.
Hoefnagel embraces the dichotomy of memory and chaos by simply stating at the beginning “this story is still happening…right now.” And so too can we think this way about time. What we have archived is both sacred and ephemeral. What is happening now is both sacred and ephemeral. The story is still happening, the memories both are and are not. We are losing and we are violently here. But there is love, most consistently, in Hoefnagel’s story. There is unbelievable, necessary love shared between Hoefnagel and their audience, who thirst for more honest stories of queer and trans* experiences. There is between Hoefnagel and all the people in their story. There is anguish and there is love. There is memory and there is not. But we are here doing our best. You Can Call Me Al is truly a stunning and surprising triumph.
You Can Call Me Al runs February 7th and 8th at New Hazlett. For more information about the show visit New Hazlett’s info page.
Photo Credit: Renee Rosensteel
Eva Phillips is celebrating her third year in Pittsburgh, third year writing for PGH in the Round, and twenty-seventh year not getting murdered (shockingly, despite all odds). She relocated to the brittle Steel City from Virginia to pursue her Masters in Literary and Cultural Studies at CMU (with a concentration in film theory and film criticism, and intersections with feminism and gender), and has spent the past few years in Pittsburgh cultivating her writing career, developing her blog https://www.tuesgayswithmorrie69.net/, raising two show cats, and widening her perspectives on the ever-evolving spectrum of theatre. She only has one Les Miserables tattoo out of her 32 tattoos, and she finds that morally reprehensible.
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