Page Person finds trans joy through toil and trouble in new show, "I'm Not a Witch At All"
THIS FRIDAY 9/6 & SATURDAY 9/7 @ 8:30pm — Highway Performance Space, Santa Monica
Pay special attention to the Person behind the curtain, the woman beyond the witch, the being beneath the green. In her new one-person show, “I’m Not a Witch At All” running this Friday and Saturday, visual and performance artist Page Person recounts her pagan pathway to transness through years of secretly cosplaying as the Wicked Witch of the West.
“When I would hear gay men say Dorothy was their icon, I was like, ‘she’s the boring one in that movie! The Wicked Witch is so much more glamourous what the fuck are you talking about?’” Person said.
Deeply inspired by Margaret Hamilton, Person spent a majority of her adult, pre-transition cosplaying in private. Taking thousands of pictures of herself in dresses and hats, painting those images, and obscuring her face, Person made a name for herself as an artist by selling paintings of which she was the secret sorceress subject.
“For a lot of my life, I imagined I lived a past life as a witch persecuted at the Salem Witch Trials. Later I learned nearly every trans woman has felt that way at some point in their life. It’s sort of a lot of people’s gateway to understanding their transness,” Person said.
Moving from Atlanta to Los Angeles in 1997, Person, still only expressing femininity through Wicked Witch cosplay, found her gradual coming out to be a career ender in the traditional art world. Her transness only alienating her further from gay men, Person turned to leather dykes and trans people— those already marginalized within the LGBTQ+ community— who fostered her through a new era of self-expression and actualization.
They were the ones who got it, who saw what I was doing and loved it and would do anything for it,” Person said. “I spent a whole lifetime working in the art world and…until drag…I never had the experience of showing up and having the people who inspire me tell me, ‘you’re one of us.’ I owe a lot to the drag world.”
In her two-part show, “I’m Not a Witch At All,” Person tells the story of the time she spent as a child gazing into the mirror until she saw her femininity in the reflection. Though she has a resume of stunts she has built over years of performing, Person is focusing primarily on personal narrative storytelling for this particular show.
“I always want people to have a story— ‘oh Page threw hot dogs at us, oh page threw trash at us,’…the last show I had nine costume changes…But what people really remember is when I’ve been vulnerable,” Person explained. “Everyone has shit they’re embarrassed of. What people relate to is the times you’re most wiling to humiliate yourself. And for me, that thing is that I secretly dressed as a witch.”
Invite your Friends of Dorothy and all the she/they lesbians you know to come see Page this Friday (9/6) and Saturday (9/7) at the Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica at 8:30 p.m. Click here to buy tickets for “I’m Not a Witch At All!”
Full story on Page with show recap to be published after opening night of the show.