Let it Burn: Smell, Participation, and Solidarity in Travis Alabanza’s Burgerz

Abstract

Burgerz, first staged in 2018, is a one-person show by British theatre-maker and writer Travis Alabanza. The production re-enacts an incident of transphobic violence Alabanza faced in 2016, during which an assailant threw a burger and yelled a transphobic slur at them. This essay argues that cooking onstage and audience participation combine to create an experience of solidarity among audiences at the performance. It explores how Burgerz incorporates modes of sociality familiar to queer nightlife venues, which in turn helps to facilitate the show’s participatory strategies in theatre audiences. Solidarity-making emerges as something spectators feel with one another as an audience unit, with the performer, and with those the performer speaks about in the performance: trans and gender non-conforming people who experience violence in the public sphere. This encourages greater sensitivity towards transphobia and encourages audiences to practise modes of support for and alongside those facing transphobic violence in and beyond the time of performance.