Performance artist Katy Baird on the need for us to embrace unpalatability
IMAGE BY JMA PHOTOGRAPHY
Disgust is underrated. We’re told to avoid it. To be nice. To keep our messiness hidden. But I think there’s power in being disgusting, especially living in a world that wants everything to be smooth, shiny and easy to swallow.
I’ve spent the last five years making a solo theatre show called Get Off. It’s about pleasure, distraction, shame, sex, drugs, fun, queerness and trying to feel something. Anything. In a society where you feel like you shouldn’t belong. It’s loud, messy and full of contradictions. There’s no neat story, no tidy resolutions. And that’s exactly the point.
Get Off is about my queer life, so it’s important that disgust is part of it. Because disgust isn’t neutral. What’s called “disgusting” is so often code for unacceptable. And what’s seen as unacceptable is nearly always shaped by class, gender and sexuality. Working-class people, especially queers, learn early on that we’re too loud, too direct, too emotional, too much.
I sometimes feel that moving through the arts sector in the UK (often dominated by terribly nice straight middle-class liberal women of a certain age or cis gay men with their own networks) means there isn’t always space for me or my work. I’m not part of those circles. I’m not palatable to them.
Let’s be unpalatable.
Disgust is about control. And who gets called disgusting? Working-class people. Fat people. Trans people. Disabled people. Queers who go cruising. Who have open relationships. Who do drugs. Let’s embrace the disgust.
When a venue director called my work “vulgar,” I thought, good. That means it’s doing something. Because vulgarity is power. Disgust is power. They’re a way of refusing to be sanitised for the comfort of middle-class audiences and an arts sector scared to take risks, that only wants queer stories when they’re polished, tragic or inspirational.
That’s why I love when someone tells me they think of my show every time they take a shit. That’s not an insult. That’s connection. That’s someone who’s now thinking differently about their body, about privacy, about what we’re told to hide.
With queer and trans people under attack, there’s a real danger that we start trying to soften ourselves. To become more palatable. To assimilate. To say, “Hey, we’re just like you, don’t hate us.” Hell no! I don’t want to be accepted on someone else’s terms. I’m here to exist on my own terms.
I want to see my queer life on stage. The version of queer life that’s sticky, funny, chaotic, full of joy and rage and bad decisions. The side that survives not in spite of shame, but through it.
Get Off is like a night out with your best mates. It’s part rave, part confessional, part public meltdown, and I’m excited to take it to the Edinburgh Fringe this August and just be fully, unapologetically myself. And if you come, maybe you will leave thinking differently about what disgust really means and what’s actually really disgusting in the world right now. (Spoiler alert: not me.)
Get Off is currently touring across Europe, with upcoming dates in the Netherlands, Finland and Poland. It will run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from 20 to 25 August at Summerhall. Tickets and more info: katybaird.com/getoff.
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